StartupDunia

Found some interesting reading stuff over the weekend. Take a peek:

1) Designing and Implementing Scalable Applications with Memcached and MySQL:

Very interesting technical presentation in PDF format.

2) Early YouTube engineer talks about scalability and outages:

via GigaOM

3) The audience for US websites is becoming increasingly international. Sites like Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn etc. not only get US visitors, but they also attract a significant share of international visitors also. This story from Wall Street Journal digs a little deeper into this scenario and how the sites need to gear ads targeted towards these international visitors as well.

I know - its been a few days since I posted on the blog. After 3 continuous weekends of travel, I’ve been relaxing and trying to de-stress myself.

Anyways, time to announce the winners for the free Proto ticket giveaway. I drew the names out of a raffle to avoid any kind of bias whatsoever.

Congrats to Kenney,  Nipul and Aniket for winning free tickets to Proto. I have forwarded your contact details to Proto folks so please expect some one to contact you within the next few days.

Thanks to all for participating !!

Three things I’ve been struggling to cope up with lately.  Yes, I’ve read and tried the GTD way of life, but for whatever reason, it just didnt work.

Has any particular technique worked for you ?  If so, can you share some tips ?

The way things are currently, I’d be ready to pay, to restore some order in these three aspects of my life.

First of all, apologies for last week’s absence - if there’s one word to describe my schedule last week, it’d be ‘maniacal’. I was traveling for most of the week and hardly had time to take a breather. Wonder how the consultants / mobile road warriors manage to travel every week.

I digress. Coming back to the title of this post - One of my favorite weekend activities is to read news stories and articles on global as well as the Indian business, technology, society etc. while sipping my morning cup of tea. While I have no problems in discovering some great quality content on NYT, Portfolio, NewsWeek, Economist, NPR, Salon etc, I find it incredibly difficult to uncover good reading stuff related to India. Besides BusinessWorld and BusinessToday, I cant think of any business-technology focused sites writing about India. For some of the most interesting humor, pop-culture, analysis etc. I read Indian blogs. In fact, I read more Indian content on blogs than on mainstream sites. Mainstream media just cant seem to get past bollywood, cricket, babies with 2 faces & 4 eyes.

I understand that I belong to a minority niche, but I’m pretty sure there are several others who feel the same.

So, in the quest to discover new, good Indian content, let me ask you this - What sites do you frequent for quality Indian content ?

Leave a comment with your top reading list for India. Hopefully, it would help us discover some really good sites, which go beyond the normal realms of bollywood and cricket.

Having read some of the stupid April Fool jokes floating around since yesterday and day before, I cant help but wonder - am I the only one who finds them getting progressively lousy each passing year ?

With the proliferation of the blogosphere, its become incredibly easy to float a wild rumor and pass it on as your big, ingenuity laden April fool’s prank.

I dont know about others, but I’m laughing no more. Yawn …..

For Internet to be really succcessful in India, its no surprise that it will need to embrace the local languages. While Hindi content is definitely emerging at a lot of places, especially blogs - domain names still need to be entered in English. A meeting of ICANN in India discussed this issue, but no decision has been reached.It looks like domain names in regional Indian languages will have to wait some longer.

For an example of a page in Hindi and which has the domain name in Hindi as well, see here.

I have been in Bangalore since the weekend and shall be at BrewHaHa (www.brewhaha.in) in Koramangla today evening between 6-8 pm. Feel free to drop by and have a chat over some coffee.

Call this an impulsive act - I really dont care.

After getting 7-8 self-promotional, spammy comments from MetroMela folks, my patience wore out. I’ve removed them from the poll for local search startups. I ignored and simply deleted the first 4-5 comments but after receiving an additional 2-3 today - it looked like they werent gonna stop.

Here’s a suggestion to MetroMela folks on how to do PR via blogs - Dont Spam !!! Not just me - everyone hates it.

Here’s wishing all of you a very happy new year.

2007 saw a lot of activity in the Indian startup, entrepreneurship, VC, mobile and broadband areas. Entrepreneurship is becoming sexy - thanks to events like Proto, Headstart and all the mainstream media coverage. Even though challenges remain, pieces of the ecosystem are slowly falling into place. Lets hope that we carry forward all the positive momentum from 2007 and hope for an even amazing 2008.

StartupDunia has seen its own share of ups and downs throughout 2007. While I’ve tried to post regularly, personal issues have required me to take a break from blogging a couple of times. Inspite of the bumpy ride, it has been an amazing year for the blog - readership and subscriber count are way up and I can hardly keep up with the inbox overload.  More than all, I’ve made some amazing new contacts over the year.  A big thanks to all of you for your support.

My goal for 2008 is threefold:

1) blog as regularly as possible 2) emphasize more on the quality of posts 3) keep providing the platform for startup and entrepreneurs

As always, your input and feedback is very valuable — so keep it coming.

Again - wish you a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2008. Stay safe and stay healthy !!

Things are getting a bit out of hand for me to cope up single handedly.  Hence, I’m thinking of bringing an additional writer on board at StartupDunia.

Here’s what I’d prefer:

* Ability to write somewhat frequently

* Preferably based in Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, Pune or Chennai

* Passionate about startups, Internet, entrepreneurship, Web 2.0 etc. in India

This will be an unpaid position. The single biggest benefit is an instant exposure to a large, pre-existing audience.

If you’re interested, drop me an email at contact {AT} startupdunia {DOT} com . If you have your own blog, prior writing experience or can provide a writing sample, it’d be a huge plus.