I have seen many tech forums around the web. Most of these are being maintained by volunteers. Taking one step beyond what’s available right now, we are proud to introduce our tech forum at programming.omsolutions.net Anyone can ask any tech question over there and the questions will be answered by our paid employees. You can ask questions related to programming, related to webmaster issues, related to HTML and design stuff. Sure don’t ask questions like “Design me a site like youtube” Instead a more appropriate question will be ” I want to integrate youtube video upload code from my site. Does youtube provides any API to help other websites integrate with youtube?”

We will keep on adding more features to our forum in due course of time.

Nitin

Detailed news here. Man this really sucks. Even biggies like yahoo and MSN have signed the agreement. Google already  has been a follower of Chinese government. From time to time we always see that big corporate always bend backwards and forget their civic responsibilities, when it comes about survival or making money.

However may be the only way to survive in Hardliner government of China is to obey its rule. If you do not obey the rule, they can bar you, the way they barred Google some time back. So may be a better strategy can be wait and watch and keep your presence there hoping that one day democracy will come in and government will stop ruling over public. I had seen from my past experiments that governments (not specifically china but all) tend to believe that they are supreme to everything. Power makes people corrupt and they forget that it is the people who ultimately are their strength.

Heck the modern time Human civilization is all about sharing the free ideas and if a government puts a ban on it, then they are not doing their job properly.

Nitin

Now that Barry has a series for bad client, I will start a parallel series for the good client. The intent is to help webmasters / clients looking for the programmer to help them better in dealing with programmers.

We have this client X. He is a maestro when it comes to handling with programmers. Before we even started the project, he created an excellent design document for his project (more than 100 pages). It included but not limited to in layman’s word his full vision of the project. It went screen by screen, page by page explaining what he really does expects. Based upon our quotation and overall estimate, he came out with a Project Plan, a detailed one. It included each and every day activity for next 65 days.
Now that our programmers are working on the project, he keeps a close eye on on-going development. If he is not sure, he asks us question on our work. This always keeps us on our toe. Our programmers know that if they commit even a single mistake any day, this guy will find out. He asks questions, makes demands, don’t let programmers continue for weeks without direction / inputs. He is very prompt in communication. You ask him a simple question and he will send a detailed response. Indeed when he finds out a mistake, he gives suggestions and time to fix it up. Overall he may be a pain-in-neck at times because of his near-to-perfect attitude, but clients like these are always gem to work with. They know what they want and they work with us to deliver them what they want.

Nitin

A$$hole number one Gave me a call out of the blue first thing Monday and asked if I could go to meet him in Sacramento, CA. I said who are you, whats your company and whats the project? he tells me (get this) that he can’t tell me what company he is with and that if I want the job bad enough then I should go meet him in Sacramento so that I can give him a quot on the job that needed to be done. I told this cat that “I” don’t even do quotes, that’s my partner nitins job and that he would have to send nitin a email with the project. Ofcourse he refused and said that he needed someone local. I said to him, “you do know that my company is based in India right”? this moron had no clue so basically I hung up in his stupid-ass face.

A$$HOLE #2 is priceless, don’t believe me, just hear his pitch in a email he sent me:

 FROM:            XXXXXX | Save Address DATE:    Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:25:20 -0700 (PDT) SUBJECT:    Re: We need a website like chatsales.com   

  “Hi,

We are looking for a company / developer that can deliver this website in a reasonable deadline and also impress us with the final product, functionality, design, & customer service.  We want someone that can exceed our expectations, which are high, because we will have much more business in the future and we are wanting to find someone who we can work with on future projects.

We are looking for a developer that is confident that they can deliver this website from start to finish in a timely manner and be very professional and customer service oriented with us.  The developer must be available to be reached during the day and also return phone calls.  Open communication is vital. 

We are accepting bids on this project now.  Please submit your most reasonable price for the completed project.

We will consider your bid, your projected completion time-frame, and the qualifications you have pertaining to this particular project.  Please explain your confidence in why you can deliver the project, your projected time-frame and briefly gloss over your strategy so we have an idea.

We don’t want a flake hiding behind a computer avoiding phone calls and procrastinating on the project. 

The developer will be paid in full when the website is finished and uploaded and fully functioning.   Once the site is uploaded and fully functioning and approved by us,  your work is finished, and we will mail a check or pay with a credit card via Paypal.  We would also like to own the rights to the website.   Any work after that will be negotiated separately as updates or a new project.

Finally, we will go with the most qualified candidate with the best bid.  Quality and professionalism are most important.

Thank you for your interest in this project.

”

 What a assclown. he wants some poor souls to create his whole project, hand it over to him once its done then if he likes it, he may or may not pay you and BTW, with just a YAHOO email to go on, why would he pay you? you can’t find him, he is a ghost so why pay you a dime. WARNING, if you are new to doing projects for others online, take a tip from me and get some money up-front and the rest when the job is done but, keep all the work on YOUR server so they can’t get it intil they pay;)………

Barry.

Just read the News of Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s staff edited Wikepedia  to remove potentially damaging details. Also came across the news of department of defense staff editing the Wikipedia to alter damaging content.

I have kind of non positive words against Wikiscanner. On one hand indeed it will prohibit the Governments and Corporate to edit Wikipedia to suit their needs. On the other hands it kills the democracy of Wikipedia. More and more organizations will start banning access to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is supposed to be the most democratic project ever created on the net. I don’t think that Wikipedia will gain any reputation by banning all Corporate / Governments. The concept of Wikipedia allows everyone to edit it. If someone edits Wikipedia and put in some ill-intended content, it is always taken care by the Wikipedia community.

Indeed every coin has two sides. If there is a wrong worded article placed in Wikipedia and a government employee, who know the facts think that he can word it better, I think he has full right to do it. If you don’t allow Government, corporate to edit the content, then very soon Wikipedia may become a haven for rebels, terrorists and other in general anti society elements. I checked some of the edits done by the employees of Australian Government. These edits includes “List of Airports in Australia”, “Rail Transport in Australia” etc. If Government decides to stop its employees from editing the Wikipedia, these articles will be incomplete. At the same time I do see a bit of editing done where government is a party. Why not allow them to correct the entries which they think have been put wrong way. If they edit too much, Anti government community member will edit entry and make it more appropriate. That’s how democracy works.

With making edit information public and making it available to media, it is the privacy loss of individuals working in organizations. There may be a few people accessing and editing Wikipedia in their office time (heck most of the people do their personal stuff at work). But by making this information public, some corporate even take action against the employees who have been very vocal at Wiki community. It will further add to loss of Wikipedia.

Overall I say, making everything public or slamming the government is never always good idea. People should respect to learn privacy of others.

Nitin

I have a friend Andy ( I won’t disclose his real name due to confidentiality reasons). Andy finished his degree from IITK (the most elite Institute of India). After passing out of IITK he had dozens of offers from mega companies, however being the adventurous spirit he was, he rejected all offers. Instead he headed to Bangalore (Silicon Valley of India) and started a Software company over there. He put his blood and sweats into the company. They had their shares of successes and failures. They started without any business experience; instead all they had was their intelligence and youth energy.


They started small, did a few local projects, eventually moved on to freelance sites to get projects from around the globes. Got ripped of multiple times but continued to innovate. Eventually they found their own market niche. They started focusing on healthcare and banking sectors of US market. Growth was steady. With time they started getting more clients and more projects. Some of their projects went into the ranges of > 100 K USD. They become a solid company with quarterly auditing and stuff. They opened a full time office in US and started doing full forced corporate marketing. Business started pouring in big time. The company started getting its name in the fastest growing companies in various magazines. Founders started getting various entrepreneurship awards. More name, more fame, more projects.


They started getting partnership and credentials. Got ISO 9001 certification got Microsoft Gold Certified Partners etc. More partnership, more credentials and more corporate clients. But there comes a time when you know you need greater amount of big money, people with better management skills and better support to continue the pace. They got a few financing offers, but nothing really materialized. Finally they got an offer to sell the company for 6 Million US Dollar all cash deal to a Europe based service provider, which my friend has gladly accepted. Heck now 6 million in pocket and credential of making a company from zero to 6 million in 4 years, probably 5 years down the road he will make hundred million from his next company. I am happy for him and examples like these keep every Entrepreneur moving and dreaming. That’s what it is all about. Dreaming big and achieving it.:) Once again congratulations Andy.


Nitin

This super cool plug-in Top Commentators is a truly wonderful motivator to keep you coming back and posting as often as possible to your favorite blogs. I first show it at shoemoney’s website and thought how freaking cool is this. What I would be interested in knowing is how much this plug-in affects your traffic and postings on your blog?

 On the other side, if you do use this plug-in, there is little doubt that some will just try to because Top Commentators so that they can get a free direct link from your blog to there site. Does this make adding the plug-in less desirable for you or maybe even make you want to use a no-follow link?

 I say before using a no-follow ask yourself “if I where posting and trying to get into the top 10 posting spots, would I go the extra mile to become a top 10 knowing that I will not be trusted with a direct link for my hard work and dedication when I get there…….

Barry.

With the replacement advisory of Nokia BL-5C battery (Read full story here) , my worst horror of explosion of cell phone battery has coming true. I am 8 hours a day on my cell either talking or responding emails. I use Nokia communicator, which indeed has a million pound heavy battery. Nokia has issued advisory that in some of the cases battery become overheated and explodes during charging. Nokia claims that happens only when cell phone is in charging mode. So far none property / body damage has been reported. However people like us who are heavy cell phone users, most of the time even when we are talking on the cell, our cell is charging. I guess from now on, I will be very careful with excessive use of my cell. True my cell phone battery hasn’t been identified as a faulty battery, but I guess if there would have been any incident of battery overheating in the model that I use, I might have been the first victim.

Lets start with rejected client Cindy from mid-city America. Cindy (which is not her real name) had a project that she has been shopping around now for atleast 2 weeks and now needs it done over the next 48 hours. We look at her project and it is indeed very doable in 2 days BUT, her attitude was so bad on the phone when I spoke with her that we chose to either charge her are special A$$-hole rate or pass on her biz so i shot her a email with are rate and she called all huffing and puffing and demanded the another rate we said we charge. I told her “for you” we only have this special rate and take it or leave it, she left it and good ridden’s.

Then there is Jerry (which is not his real name) from small-city America. In responding to a email I sent him, good’ol Jerry thought it would be nice to let me know how poorly done my pitch email was and that he might have been ready to do some biz if only I had worded my email better. Jerry was also kind enough as to leave his companies website and his personal contact info in this email:). Now armed with this info, I went right to work. The first place I stopped was his website and boy was that a mess. I am talking FRAMES in alot of pages, title’s that had the same thing on them through-out the whole site, many pages in PDF form, not more then a handful of links and a Alexa rating in the millions:). I pointed all this out to Jerry and told him that as he is a founder and high ranking officer at this company that he should be ashamed of himself for not having a better online presence. Needless to say we didn’t strike up any deals:)………..

How was Your week, any clients from hell?

 Barry.