Generatrix

Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, on his blog

sweta — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:46:29 +0000

I wrote the first version of Gmail in one day. It was not very impressive. All I did was stuff my own email into the Google Groups (Usenet) indexing engine. I sent it out to a few people for feedback, and they said that it was somewhat useful, but it would be better if it searched over their email instead of mine. That was version two. After I released that people started wanting the ability to respond to email as well. That was version three. That process went on for a couple of years inside of Google before we released to the world.

Google knows how much you spend, and on which network

sweta — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:44:07 +0000

So they are finally at it.

Google is integrating data from Analytics into Adsense and Adwords. Now they know exactly how much ROI you get on ads placed on which networks. This also means they now now how to optimize it.

But for whom?

“In order to improve your experience with Google products, Google Analytics is updating its data sharing policy. You now have the ability to share your Analytics data with other Google services. This will improve integration, enable additional features in Google’s advertising services (including Google Analytics, AdWords and AdSense) and improve your experience with these products.

Press “Accept” to enable data sharing between Google Analytics and other Google services or for additional options, choose “More data sharing options”.

Cool Hack : How to find out if a user is logged in to Google, Facebook, Twitter or your website

sweta — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:41:13 +0000

Kentbrewster has put a series of interesting posts about how to find out if a user on your website has logged into Facebook, Twitter or Google.

Basically, he searches the code to find some specific javascript code, which is loaded only if the user is signed in to the service. Once he finds what he is looking for, he opens the page using a SCRIPT tag. Depending on the availability of the javascript he can determine if the user is signed in or not.

Why is this important?

Because its like releasing an API without knowing about it. You really don’t want people to find out what your users are doing. Do you?

You can find the posts on Facebook, Google and Twitter on his blog.

How to become an expert

sweta — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:14:02 +0000

Getting started with Mbakarma again

sweta — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:57:32 +0000

Mbakarma is down.

Though not because we didn’t pay up the hosting bills, but because its time for it to be new again.

Joel Spolsky says that good software takes 10 years to mature, and at Mbakarma we are already closing in on the first year. The first version, which came out on the 19th of August, 2007, did prove to be much more appreciated that we had hoped for.

Over a period of 2 months, a total of 4500 users decided to register for the service, and completed a total of about 8700 tests. It’s not bad considering that we spent only about $2 a day on advertising in the first month, and then stopped doing it completely.

Over those two months, we also managed to get a lot of feedback, from a variety of sources. And on the whole, we realized that were a number of places where we needed to improve.

Even though we concentrated more towards the services side of business over the last few months, it’s end of March already, and we are back doing what we love most - Mbakarma.

In fact, we can actually call us “we” now, because we have a new full time developer working with us. Sanjay has been here for almost a month now, and is already working full time on Mbakarma.

Any-hoo, it’s time to quit talking and write some more code. In case you would like to know, the estimated time of arrival of the new Mbakarma is the end of April. We would have a brand new look, features and questions, and we are quite sure you would love us even more.

David Heinemeier Hansson, on scaling Ruby, when asked about how they scaled Campfire

sweta — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:53:09 +0000

…in our case we (eventually) did feel the need to make something faster, so we looked at the Campfire application. Where was the bottleneck? Where were we having issues or issues that were going too slow? We found that bottleneck and that bottleneck was a hundred lines of Ruby code………So we chose to rewrite those hundred lines of Ruby code, to see what it would take to write it in the fastest language we can rewrite it in; we didn’t rewrite it in assember, but we rewrote it in C, a fantastic language for rewriting performance bottlenecks….

MBA Karma featured on The Times of India, Mumbai Edition

sweta — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:50:34 +0000

Here is some great news, MBA Karma featured on the Time of India, Mumbai Edition today (20 Aug). If you have the newspaper, you need to move to page 5 to view the article. I have reproduced the text here.

Mbakarma

admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:32:53 +0000

The first Online On-Demand Testing Solution for CAT

Good news for CAT aspirants. MBAKarma is about to go live soon!

MBAKarma is the first ever online and on-demand testing solution for CAT preparation. It implements a revolutionary and ground breaking approach which is much superior to the traditional approach for CAT preparation. With our product, tests can be taken whenever you like at the comfort of your home. No need to run around to faraway centers and waste time and energy.

We bring to you superbly crafted test series with the right mix of technology. Our testing solution not only easy to use but can be attempted at your convenience. That’s not all. There is no limit to the number of tests. No need to compromise your preparation because the course provides only a fixed number of tests. Give test after test after test for as long as you feel you can get better.

At the end of every test, we provide a detailed test analysis which will help you in fine tuning your strategy at every stage of your preparation. The test analysis would give you the final scores along with a section wise and category wise breakup. So not only can you find out which section you need to catch up on but also which category of questions need special attention. In a few weeks, you will be able to take a demo here and experience MBAKarma first hand.

Join our rapidly growing community of MBAKarma members and participate in the online discussions. The topics range from preparation strategies to solutions of test problems and interview questions. Find like minded buddies amongst MBAKarma co-aspirants and help each other succeed. Find answers to your queries and provide insight to others.

You won’t have to wait any longer, this is the time to start preparing for CAT and MBAKarma is your best bet!