Category: Technology

Categories
Science Technology

Red Bull Stratos – freefall from the edge of space

Okay, check this out: This is a mission to the edge of space that will try to surpass human limits that have existed for more than 50 years. Felix Baumgartner will undertake a stratospheric balloon flight to more than 120,000 feet / 36,576 meters and make a record-breaking freefall jump in the attempt to become the first man to break the speed of sound in freefall (an estimated 690 miles / 1,110 kilometers per hour), while delivering valuable data for medical and scientific advancement.

You can watch this live here!

Categories
Business Internet Marketting Software Web

Ever Tried Googling Yourself?

Have you ever tried Googling yourself? Were you surprised? Was it a good surprise? Was it the worst thing you did all day when you first googled yourself? Or are you one of those who google themself all the time? Or is your name not even on google?

For me, showing up on google is 80% of my marketing whether it is for business reasons or personal. Today when I googled myself, I found that there were other Kapil Busaras who were sharing the first page on Google. I am the face of my company. Most of the time my business depends on my name. My clients have found their way to me to GIVE me business from googling me.

Why have I put so much emphasis on my name up until now? Because the world we live in is very dynamic and is ever changing. I started off as a software developer, then as  Performance Test Engineering, later I became a free lance  web develper, and when that was going well, I founded Okinara Consulting Services. Although when the company was formed it's core business was focused on web development, the name that was chosen did not indicate that it was strictly a web development company. I knew I wanted to expand into other areas. Today Okinara does so much more than web development, we design Logos, flyers, brochures, create strategic solutions to social media marketing, and we will soon be launching a new product.

Tomorrow I may wish to start another business or get into a different industry. If it is a brand new company, people may not know about it, however people who know me as Kapil Bulsara, will know me even if it is a new company, and building on my previous successes I can relatively easily transition into a new field of work or business.

Some of you may not have the luxury of owning a domain name that is your personal name because it might already be taken, and even if you do have that domain name, you may be plagued by having to share the Google spotlight with other people who have the same name as you, which I am currently facing.

For that reason it is important to expose yourself more with the use of social media sites. Everyone has a Facebook account, and If you don't, stop everything at once, including reading this article and create an account NOW!. Once you have a Facebook account, what you should do is create a facebook username which gives you a public facebook page, but don't worry your personal stuff like your wall and photos because it will not be visible to the public, unless you chose to. For e.g. this is mine: http://www.facebook.com/kapil.bulsara. It is not very professional you might think. It does not have to be. Everyone knows you have a life outside of work.

Another think you need to do is get a linkedin account. If you don't already know, LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Here is my page http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/kapil-bulsara/31/4a8/821.

You also need to get a twitter account. Here is my twitter page http://twitter.com/kapilbulsara. The common thing I hear about twitter is that they don't like that it is all open to public. Well you don't need to post personal details on twitter. I use twitter to share some semi-personal stuff and also tweet about my business or just general information that will be useful for the average citizen of the Internet.

All this creates exposure and awareness of who you are. If you haven't noticed this is not new, this is the norm now. You absolutely MUST have an online presence. Traditional networking still exists and can't really be replaced, but you cannot neglect social networking. A lot of your success depends on who you know!

 

Categories
Software Technology

Ubuntu 11.10 makes Ubuntu a serious competitor in the mainstream desktop market

The mainstream desktop operating system market has been long dominated by Microsofts’ Windows. Second to Windows is Apple’s Mac OSX. Although Linux has been around much longer than most people would know, its inability to capture even the slight market share in the desktop market had been known for a long time.

For those who don’t know what Linux is, Linux is a free open source operating system. There are two parts to it(yes I am grossly simplifying this). The first part is the Linux core operating system called the kernel, and then there are different flavors or distribution of linux. Individuals and companies can take the core operating system, modify it or add more on top of the existing core. There are literally over a hundred different flavours of linux!

 

Linux desktop was always for hardcore computer geeks and programers and it was NOT pretty.

Enters Ubuntu!

The main Linux desktop players according me were Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse. What Ubuntu has done to Linux desktop is amazing giving it the wow factor! We’re not just talking about which free open source operating system is better, we’re talking about competing with proprietary  software like Windows and MacOS.

 

Let’s start of with this stunning Login in screen! Nay, not a login screen, … a welcome screen!

 

Office Suite

Ubuntu comes preinstalled with LibreOffice which has all that you need and perhaps a little more too – its FREE! I have used MS Office, then moved to OpenOffice, which is also a great office suite and one which you can installed on Ubuntu too, and now I use LibreOffice. Libre office opens every possible document type you can think of even MS office 2007 and 2010 files. You can even save in .docx which is what MS Word 2007 uses.  And you can export it into PDF format!

The Ubuntu Dash

Here is a side by side Simple and Advanced view for you. Things are really easy to find with their smart categorizing and if you cant find what you’re looking for, just type it in the search bar! If you want to play some games,…type games,. if you’re looking for Office apps, well type that! Looking for music…you know the rest.

It even shows you what is installed and what you can install from Ubuntu Software Center! That is amazing!

When has my MacOS spotlight search showed be available games when I type “games”? :(..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ubuntu Software Centre

Ubuntu Software Centre is your one stop shop experience. This is just like App store on your Iphone and is a response to the App store on  a mac. Does Windows have something like this? Not that I know of, but then I haven’t used Windows in the past 2 years or so.

In Ubuntu Software Centre, you can browse by different categories, you can check your history of what program was installed/remove at what date, and you can see a quick snapshot of all the programs installed on your Ubuntu.

Social Networking

Your Ubuntu system comes pre-configured to get you started with Facebook, Google Talk, twitter etc..And you can manage all of your networks from one place. Take that Windows,… take that Mac Os and take that Google Chro…umm… never mind…

Amazing Search

Ubuntu search is brilliant. You search by name, and then you can narrow your search down by size of the file, type of file; whether it is an image, document, audio, video or presentation and by when it was last modified. It is also very quick to give you your search results!

Mac’s Expose clone

So ya, sure they have copied macs expose feature. For those who don’t know what this is, when you click twice on an application icon on the dash you see all your application windows. See below. This is an awesome feature for folks like me who have multiple windows running in the background.

Multiple Desktops

Ubuntu has had this since its inception, and no need to explain. See below.

Ubuntu One

This is Ubuntu’s cloud service. You can store and sync your files and music on multiple computers so that you’re always up to date and its FREE!(you get 5GB of storage; upgrade is available). Ubuntu One Music Streaming offers music-streaming apps for iPhone and Android phones. The “Music Streaming” package costs $3.99 a month or $39.99 per year. It just keeps getting better!

 

Categories
Software Technology

Did the Lion Really Roar? – A Quick Look at Mac OSX Lion

Apple calls it “The worlds most advanced operating system advances even further”. Could it be? Could apple have come up with another ‘Magical Thing’? Just like the IPad2?… Wait.. what? Is that sarcasm? Maybe… or maybe not.

My first reaction which I tweeted was, “The new Mac OSX Lion gives me stuff I wanted, but takes away stuff I need and then gives me stuff that I neither need or want…”

Then there were a bunch of “WTF”, but now slowly using it for close to 3 weeks I am getting accustomed to the so-called features that advances the most advanced operating system even further.

Here’s a few things that I like about the new OSX Lion.

  • Mission Control – and the Grouping of Apps.  Lion’s predecessors created a mess of all the open apps and files in one big clutter. At first this grouping feature felt a bit annoying because I was so used to looking at all my files at once. But now that I have gotten use to it, this is so much better. It keeps things organized and saves you time in the long run(once you get used to it)

  • Desktops – spaces were removed and replaced with Desktops, and I know many people who are complaining about this. Some even going on a rant like little kids who just got their candy stolen from them. I never really used spaces on my Snow Leopard because I actually thought it sucked (yet another technical term) in comparison to Ubuntu’s desktops and how easy it was to move from one desktop to the other and move files around. Lion actually does it different now and at first glance (just like all other new additions) seems like a very wrong thing that Apple did. But it’s actually much easier to move files around and keep things separated and spawning off new desktop is a breeze… just drag and drop

 

  • New Finger Gestures – I am still not a 100% satisfied with this.  I no longer can zoom in and out in Finder, or go Top-Bottom with 3 fingers in Firefox. Safari seems to have crashed a few times, but that’s why I use Firefox 99% of the time. And they took away my 4 finger swipe to switch between apps, instead of I have to use Command+ Tab, feels like windows again. But I can use that to switch between Desktops so I guess it’s still okay.

  • LaunchPad – This feature is something that I have totally ignore and is of no use to me, and it just feels annoying to say the least. However, it may still come in handy for most people out there. It organizes all your applications like the Iphone, and the Ipad and uses the same kind of finger swipe to switch between pages of applications. A plus for the average user – not for me.

  • Air Drop – have not used it and A bit disappointed because it only works with Lion. Not Cool.

  • Full Screen mode – nice but not a must. If they took it away tomorrow. I wont even notice it.

 

  • Mail & Calendar – I like the fact that exchange support is better than before and Create Account wizard is much like that on Iphone and IPad, some improvements in the Mail and ICal interface. So overall its a nice improvement, but I still wont be using it because it’s not enough and simply no match for Gmail and Google Calendar.

  • THE LION REMEMBERS – I saved the best for last. This by far is my most loved features. When you want to shut down your computer it asks you: “Reopen Windows when Logging back in?”. and I gleefully say Okay :). And the next time I turn my computer on, the Lion remembers all my open applications and files and arranges the windows the way I had left it. When I get to work, I want to get started right away. This gets everything ready for me and I don’t need a note to myself, or even have to remember what I was working on the night before. It’s right there… This is one feature where I can say “The Lion Roars”

 

Categories
Business Marketting Software Technology Web

Project Management Tools – PHProjekt Vs SugarCRM Vs Dolibarr

Has anyone ever a difficult time organizing their meetings, leads, prospect clients, current customer issues, projects and TODOs. I know I have. I am pretty organized, but still I want and need a centralized system from where I can track everything, something that quickly gives me an overall picture. Currently I use text documents, spread sheets, gmail, google calendar and my memory to accomplish this.

I have thought about getting  a CRM system or a Project Management Software to help me with my getting more organized and efficient. Just yesterday I seriously started doing a lot of research and testing things out. I was looking for a LAMP based web application that handles project management and CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Although I’m a proud owner of by business, I’m still pretty much regarded as a freelancer as opposed to an entrepreneur. I need something simple that gets the work done.

I narrowed it down to these 3:

  1. SugarCRM
  2. Dolibarr
  3. PHProjekt

Now I’m really confused as to which one I should use.

These are some of the things that I need.

  • Ability to have customer accounts related to projects
  • Add and schedule different tasks inside a project
  • Time tracking for each task and summary of time spent on each project
  • ability to calculate ROI (not a must but good to have)
  • Keep customer related info such as project history, internal notes as to what kind of sales strategy is working with this customer, project proposals, services they are currently using from me etc…
  • Keep track of work that I outsource
  • Controllable access to let contractors check and update their tasks, and have clients update and check project issues and progress

Any help in deciding what I should be using is very much welcomed. Please leave a comment or contact me from my contact page. Thanks

Categories
Business Internet Philosophy Self Development Technology Web

Intuition and Instinct are the New Tools of the Excessive Information Age

It has been quite some time since we’ve been living in the information age. We have already quite matured in the web 2.0 and online social network age. I’m sure you’ve heard so many times that we are just bombarded with information from everywhere. I call it the “excessive information age”. All of us are now more than ever so easily influenced by everything and everyone around us from all sorts of social media, and at the same time we are getting confused by all this noise.

It is almost inevitable that we will have to evolve. We are pushing limits of our social and logical cognition. If you really think about it, the situation almost requires quick judgement and adaptation. Stability almost seems nowhere to be seen, and for thousands of years in our evolution, stability is the one thing that we have experienced and adapted to. Our environment(by this I mean our day-to-day activities, by which I mean interaction online and interaction with computers in general) is changing at such a rapid pace that our minds are getting pushed to this quick form of adaptation. Cultures all around the world seem to be blending too. So what we learned while growing up might not necessarily be very useful when interacting when we start encountering people from different races and cultures around the globe. But we are learning and evolving now more or less a single unit.

What does all this mean. Well if you go to the theory of evolution and natural selection, this is what I think is bound to happen. Success in this time and age depends on quick, rapid yet correct action. You can either make it or break it in a few actions, sometimes in a matter of weeks, and crazily sometimes even in a matter of days.

What is needed in this age is not a 1000 hours of research to make a decision, as some people do when chosing a product, a service, a house, or a job. What is required in this age of excessive information is intuition and instinct to make a correct judgement and to be able to do it quick AND TAKE ACTION, at the same time being aware of  the risk of burning out too quickly. We are seeing instant successes – it no longer takes decades to reach a level that most people dream about, it takes a few years and sometimes just a few months, or in some extreme cases just a day, or well… just a single video of less than 5 minutes on this thing called ‘YouTube'(I’m sure you’ve heard of it)

I don’t see all of this as luck. I see all of this as evolution. People who might seem like they don’t have the slightest clue about what they are doing are becoming instant success. It is my belief (and please don’t sue me for this) that these people are instinctively driven to behave in a certain way, or to act a certain way.These individuals who posses this instincts to act in a quick and correct way will become successful, and to some ‘intelligent’ hard working people this may seem very scarey, because you no longer need to get a degree, or a Phd to get ahead in life(actually who am I kidding, that never was the case anyway).

What am I saying here? I’m saying, natural selection will take place because conditions have changed and the rules that applied in the past for success (and ultimately survival) don’t apply now. With these changes in the conditions in our ‘environment’ natural selection will pick out the new winners, who are instinctively driven by and towards quick correct actions.

 

Categories
Internet Software Technology Web

#CIRA 2010

I attended the annual CIRA(Canadian Internet Registration Authority) annual general meeting. There were two brilliant keynote speakers Terry O’Reilly – radio host of CBC’s O’Reilly and The Age of Persuasion, Mitch Joel – Social Media expert and author of Six Pixels of Separation. There was a panel of “Architects of the Internet”, which had some of the most brilliant and pioneers in the field and they discussed the origins and the future of the Internet.

Paul Vixie – Internet Systems Consortium(ISC). He is the primary author of BINDv8, has been contributing to Internet protocols and UNIX systems since the 1980s. He has developed tools like, sends, rtty, cron etc…

John Demco – Webnames.ca. John is basically the God Father of “.ca”. He helped create the .CA domain in 1987 and was its initial registrar, and chairing the CA Domain Committee until 2000. He has also been responsible for chairing and managing a number of academic and research networks.

Chris O’Neil – Google Canada. Chris leads Google’s operations in Canada as Country Director for Google Canada. He is focused on building Google’s brand and driving innovation to help fuel growth for Canadian Business.

Byron Holland – President and CEO of CIRA.

Categories
Business Internet Marketting Software Technology Web

Get mobile but dont throw your laptop away

Everyone everywhere is getting mobile – actually this statement is so 2000. What I should be saying is everyone is mobile and everyone is connected everywhere every time, and the fact is even that this is so 2006.

The question that I am trying to answer is – should we be throwing away our desktops and laptops and go completely mobile with cell phones and tablets like the iPad?

Definitely throw away your desktop. If you just bought one, then keep it to store your media and then when it’s time to throw it away, throw it away.

Laptops – keep those because they won’t be going away anytime soon. The iPad isn’t really a netbook killer yet and netbooks simply put are not notebooks. There are a lot of things that the iPad doesn’t have. Like a web cam, less computing power and etc etc. We’ve heard all about the iPad haven’t we?

Even this blog was posted from my phone, and I am not talking about using a web browser on my phone. I’m actually using a wordpress app on my iPhone to draft and post. I can approve, disapprove and delete comments directly from this app.

When I need to go somewhere and I don’t know where it is, I don’t even bother checking. I get in my car, look it up the gps on my IPhone and I’m off.

I don’t carry a watch on me, I use my phone(likes millions do these days), I don’t keep alarm clock – got a phone. And remember those daily planners, those little books they used to carry back in the days – ya you don’t even need that anymore, and if you are still carrying those – shame on you!

Get a smart phone!!

Even shopping had been made easy. Some of the major stores have their own apps for phone like the iphone and you can browse their entire catalog.

Just about to head into a meeting, so I’ll just wrap it up here, but stay stunned!

Categories
Business Marketting Philosophy Technology Uncategorized

Spring is here

Spring is here and this season brings new hopes, new opportunities and hopefully brighter results. I am keeping myself busy with projects. Keep those ideas pouring in and hopefully we can collaborate and build something exciting.

Many requests for blog sites and shopping carts have come to me and as always I’m happy to be of service. For those who do not know yet, I am also providing strategic couching in areas of social media marketing, online business strategy, career planning, kick-ass study plans for college and high school kids and help for folks to get out of the analysis paralysis and into putting passion into action.

Just recently I had a client hand me a $100 cheque for my advice which hardly took 20 minutes.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If there is a solution out there then I can do it, if there is no solution out there yet, let’s go get down to it and make one. I don’t believe any business that I do can be done alone. Like I said in my previous articles customers are collaborates of success, so every success solution comes with your efforts and mine.

So why pay me to do anything? Well, when everyone does, I watch, and when everyone stops I do! I love uncommon sense and I love the challenge! 🙂

So contact me and lets get down to business!

Categories
Internet Software Technology Web

Technology Overload

As much as I love technology and especially the internet, I think we are starting to push its threshold. The internet was supposed to make life easier, and for some time it did, but now it seems more and more things are popping up and we’ve begun to push limits.

Especially starting with Web 2.0 and the online social network craze,  it almost seems we are racing against time. Everything is super fast, super connected and super “oh my God, get me out of here”.

Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube, and what not. All these networks were meant to keep us connected and get us closer, but on one end it seems that we all are getting so close we’re overlapping onto each other and invading all kinds of spaces that we can think of. And on the other hand our ‘online’ world instead of making the world smaller is becoming so huge that we don’t know who’s who and what’s where anymore.

Google just launched Google Buzz – I thought it was going to be Google Wave that was going go to be the next big thing. Another online social networking feature but this time added to Gmail. This means more networks, more feeds, more updates, more people that I don’t know adding me and trying to be my friend so that they can send me mass pokes, and walls and updates about things that I don’t care about.

Again, as I said, don’t get me wrong I love technology and I love the Internet, but it’s just getting too much. EVERYONE is on Twitter or Facebook to say the least. People want to get ‘connected’ to everyone it seems. How can people have 500 friends? How can they tweet so much? I bet if you send a friend request to a 100 most random people on Facebook, 80 of them will add you the very same day; the other 20 might add you in the following days or if not, then they don’t use their facebook account anymore.

Even I started an online social networking site called kesario.com few months back. It’s not working as well as I thought it would. I wanted to come up with solutions, and the more I spend time studying the trends the more I’m realizing that something drastic is about to happen on the Internet.

What made me think was this. Yesterday I launched the site wordsthatmatter.net for Valentine’s Day. It was a crazy idea that I had and thought it would be very interesting. Anyway, to market this site, I decided to use all these social networks. There were so many people who just kept accepting my friend requests, and following me on twitter. I opened an account specially for that site so no one really knows me, yet everyone kept adding me as a friend and following my tweets.

People on facebook and twitter are already using it to do mass marketing, and now Google Buzz. There are SO MANY of these now. Yes I know, even my site kesario.com is one of them. Sooner or later we are going to reach a threshold and the weaker ones will get eliminated (yes I know, my site is also amongst the weaker ones).

I was thinking we need a new dimension to all this – a network to manage all these networks, and there are a few out there already, but today I realized that that is only patching up the problem we are about to face. This Web 2.0 and social media/network bubble has started to reach its threshold and I predict that sooner or later it will burst.

I will write another post to say what I mean by this Web 2.0 bubble bursting because this article is getting too long and it becomes difficult with the constraint of time we have in this super fast world that we live in.