Inverted Passion

Know what's true and do what's right

All posts in Personal

Greatest Living Thinkers Today

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Personal, Philosophy11 Replies

In no particular order, following are the people whom I consider greatest living thinkers today. These are the people who are trying to pioneer a paradigm shift in our thinking exactly the same way Einstein, Leonardo Vinci and other people did in their respective times. You will definitely find worthwhile to read about the (works of) following thinkers:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: debunking economists and their arrogance Richard Dawkins: pro-evolution and anti-religion

Paul Graham ...  Read the entire post →

BarCamp at IIT-Delhi, India on 11-12 October 2008

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Personal, Technology1 Reply

I am happy to invite you to the fifth avatar of BarCampDelhi, which will be held at IIT-Delhi on 11th and 12th October. With 100+ registrations already, the event is set to be super-exciting this time.

For those of you who do not know what BarCamps are all about, check this wikipedia entry. Barcamps are mainly user generated events with no fixed agenda. All the attendees are invited to participate in the talks and whoever wants to voice his opinion on anything, he can. As the word goes around, “BarCamp is an event where no one is barred from speaking.” [Courtesy: Prashant Singh] ...  Read the entire post →

Vote for my Startup Kroomsa: Music for Help

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal

I’ve been nominated for the TATA NEN Hottest Startups awards. Brought to you by National Entrepreneurship Network and TATA Group, in association with Helion, Mint, Seedfund and Wadhwani Foundation, it is India’s only community-chosen awards for Indian start-ups.

Vote for my startup Kroomsa (http://kroomsa.com/) online at NEN Hottest Startups or via sms by smsing HOT71 to 56767 (Indian numbers only!)

Looking forward to your support.

How to Start an Online Business

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal2 Replies

I am releasing the guide titled ‘How to Start an Online Business: 11,520 Free Resources for the Internet Entrepreneur‘ for free.

This 40 page guide is a massive (11,520 to be precise) compilation of free to access resources on how to start an online business. These internet resources take the form of tips, tricks, tools, techniques, advice, tutorials, tests, blog posts, articles and guides.

The guide takes you through different phases of starting an online business, right from generating a business idea to implementing and marketing it and later growing your business. To best of my author’s knowledge, no other guide contains such a huge list of resources and is so comprehensive that everyone (from newbies to professionals) is going to find something useful in it. ...  Read the entire post →

New Features in MyJugaad.in – Slideshow for Webpages

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal, Technology1 Reply

I am very proud to announce you that we have developed a whole lot of new features in MyJugaad.in. Some of them are the following:

  • The Search Zone. Now you can search the web, blogs, images and videos from MyJugaad.in and watch results as a slideshows. The feature uses Yahoo, Google, Flickr and Youtube for powering the search.
  • Instant Creation of Slideshow. On the main page, just enter the feed URL and a slideshow is generated. No need to register!
  • Sleeker Navigation Bar. If you haven’t checked the new slideshow interface, you are surely missing an experience. The navigation bar of the slideshow is sleeker and cooler than ever.
  • The Best New Feature: Embed Slideshows on your Blog/Website. Just grab embed code from the desired slideshow and paste it in your blog. Check below to see how the embedded slideshow looks like.



By the way, MyJugaad.in has had excellent reviews from numerous websites. Some of them are KillerStartups, DesiStartups and Anti Social Development. If you too can help us by spreading the word, nothing like it!

Do check out the new features and let us know how you find them. Your feedback is sincerely appreciated. ...  Read the entire post →

How I built a web app in six days for Rs. 350 ($8.75) only

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal, Technology19 Replies

I just read this story where they talk about how they built a web app in 4 days for $10,000. Voila! It struck me that I have been equally competitive (if not better) in terms of building a web app. So, here I share my story of building a web app.

I recently built MyJugaad.in, which lets anybody create a slideshow from a set of webpages or RSS feeds. Following is the time line and the money involved during making this web app.

  • Day 1: Conceived the idea. Explored the idea space. Refined it. Drew user interface for the slideshow on a paper.
  • Day 2: Realized that Javascript is the way to go forward. Researched on Javascript Toolkits. Found JQuery to be the best. Learnt Jquery. Started programming Slideshow front-end using JQuery.
  • Day 3: Wasted a ton of time on sorting cross-browser incompatibilities. Done some more programming. Working prototype ready by evening.
  • Day 4: Wanted to make a system for user authentication and management, slideshow creation and management. Confused between Django, CodeIgniter or CakePhP. Chose CodeIgniter. Started Learning and programming the web app. (Used SimplePie for RSS feed fetching and parsing.)
  • Day 5: Finished Programming. Discovered that NYTimes.com was breaking the slideshow due to their iframe breaking script. Had a hell of a time trying fixing that.
  • Day 6: Looked for interesting free designs on the web. Chose this. Implemented and integrated the design with the web app. Wrote a basic ‘about’, ‘faq’, ‘contact’ page. Uploaded the web app on a shared hosting account free of cost (courtesy: my friend). Used a domain already purchased: myjugaad.in (cost Rs. 350). Seeded the app with a few initial users and data. Announced the web app on my homepage and status message on GTalk.

What’s missing?

  • Market Research: I should have done initial market research. Instead, I simply jumped into programming the web app. If I had done some market research, I would have discovered a product with almost the same feature set as mine’s. Nevertheless, I learnt a lot during my six day journay. So, I don’t regret making this app.
  • Testing: I just did some initial testing. But should have done a little bit more testing.
  • Users: I didn’t do any marketing for my web app. That’s bad and I am going to fix it soon.

Hope this post helps you write and launch your own web app in record time.
Any thoughts? ...  Read the entire post →

Are You Guilty of Not Solving World’s Problems?

Posted on Author Paras ChopraPosted in Entrepreneurship, Personal, Physics15 Replies

I am. Having read this article intensified my guilt. Aren’t there enough web mashups already? Do you really need to create yet another social network? Web entrepreneurs today are so hallucinated by their own culture that they have forgotten that there is a whole range of important problems to be solved for which the internet is not necessarily the panacea.

I am not suggesting that what they are doing is wrong. In fact, they are making best use of what they know. They are making cool virtual pets simulations, social networks for cats, amazing google maps mashups and a ton of amazing applications which really have potential to revolutionize the world. Imagine, how the world would be transformed if all the cats in the world could actually communicate over the internet. But – here comes the reality – apart from a (very) few cases (read Facebook, Youtube, etc.) the potential for these web apps never seems to be realized. Millions of such useless apps hopelessly float around the web, waiting for someone to discover and use them. ...  Read the entire post →