To Blog or Not To Blog

This news has been in the pipeline for quite some time. We wanted to break this news earlier, but there was a lot of work to be done. Now that most (if not all) of the work is complete, I can proudly announce,

SeenReport has secured Samaa tv as its first client. SeenReport will provide its live reporting platform and social media suite to Samaa tv to build its Citizen News platform, iSamaa.

The site, iSamaa.tv is already live. Getting a client within one year of its launch (10 Jun 08), is indeed a great achievement for which the whole team is to be congratulated.

When we (Me, Sharjeel and Yaser) left our jobs and started working together, we didnt know how to make money, do marketing, make sales or run a business. However, we strongly believed that,

1. Every huge business starts with a small scale
2. We can use technology to create things. If we create something that solves a problem and creates value, the money will follow.
3. We make a great team, together we can do great things. And if we do great things, we will achieve great results

Our initiative was met with critique, particularly from many ‘Experts’ on ‘Business’. These experts graciously took time out from their jobs/studies and gave us hours long lectures and highlighted how we were destined to doom. The free advice would be,

“You guys are just techies, you don’t know how to run a business”, “You wont make money…Period!”, “You’ll be on the streets on 6 months”, “Who cares about the value creation, its about the money”, “This is not Silicon Valley dear, you guys are wasting yourselves”, “Create value then money? Yeah maybe in books, but not in real life”, ”You should work for 6-8 years, then do an MBA before you even start thinking about working for yourself”

Each negative comment left us with stronger dedication. After all, why should we take advices about running business from people who have never run any business themselves. Ironically, such remarks never came from any of the founders and CEOs (both successful and failed). In fact, all the founders we met had a high degree of maturity and encouraged us to go ahead with our venture.

In the past one year, SeenReport has come a long way. From a single page web site to a full blown citizen news platform that offers live mobile reporting, online news community portals and news publishing mechanism. During this journey we created something valuable, helped common people get noticed, met great people like Mr. Shahid Malik, Rabia Garib, Jawad Farid, Jehan Ara, Dr. Umar Saif, Amir Jahangir, helped activists like Dr. Awab manage and organize information in a better way, played our part in covering the long march 08, 09 and had lots of fun while working together on something that we all loved.

But it wasn’t a walk in the park; far from it. During the past year, we’ve had 72 hours long work days, at times spent weeks in the office, slept under our desks, worked without pay for months, lived off the occasional consultancy and nearly sold our PS2 :). But even in the extremely desperate times, we never lost faith in the team. If one faltered, another would present its shoulder and bear the weight. I can only thank Allah who blessed me with such a great team.

I would like to thank,

• Baoo jee (aka Belal Muhammad Hashmi) whose smoke filled late night sittings showed us way when it was pitch dark
• Hashim Ali (CEO Mantaq Systems Pvt. Ltd.) whose selfless guidance and encouragement gave me confidence to achieve anything
• Mr. Shafiq-ur-Rehman, whose energy filled discussions kept us motivated
• Mr. Shahid Malik and Rabia Garib, whose sincere advice helped us set our direction
• My family, for understanding and never putting any pressure on me
• My friends, who never lost faith in me
• My ex-colleagues who always encouraged me to aim higher
• My not so friends, whose constant critique and harsh remarks kept us going even when we wanted to give up

But above all, it is the grace of Allah Almighty that helped us at each step. Without His help, we wouldn’t have achieved anything. And of course, the team that made this possible.

It is fitting that the SeenReport’s first deal is with Samaa tv that has already established itself as the leader in innovative journalism and represented Pakistan in Stanford Innovation Journalism conference 09. We believe that Samaa’s initiative to empower common people to make their voices heard, is aligned with SeenReport’s vision of ‘Make news, Be heard, Bring change’. Powered by SeenReport’s state of the art platform, Samaa’s citizen news portal now has a perfect blend of mobile reporting, rich content publishing, community driven content, live news publishing, localized news and user engagement in news.

I would like to congratulate and thank the SeenReport team (Yaser Awan, Sharjeel Ahmed and Umar Saif), a team of highly capable friends and immensely talented guys whose hard work, faith and constant struggle made this dream a reality.

I am sure this is just the first good news from the series of good news to follow

Edit: Here is Yaser’s view on the same news 

How do you get the model class object from a string containing model name?

This came up multiple times during SeenReport development. While recording views, saving votes and adding comment on an object, I had to get the model class using the model name. The scenario would be,

• The view receives the model name and object id
• Fetch the object from db
• Perform action on the object

However, I couldn’t find a suitable way to get model class from the model name. The best way I could find was by using the globals function. Here is how it worked,

def my_view(request, model_name, object_id):
      model_class = globals()[model_name]
      obj = model_name = get_object_or_404(model_class, id=object_id)
      # perform required actions and return response

However, using globals requires that the models should already be imported. This would fail for a model that didn’t exist in global scope. Also I had to needlessly import models in views.

My guess was that there should be solution in the content types framework. After poking around for a while I found ContentType.model_class. This is how the above code would look like,

def my_view(request, model_name, object_id):
      model_class = ContentType.objects.get(model=model_name).model_class()
      obj = model_name = get_object_or_404(model_class, id=object_id)
      # perform required actions and return response

Pakistan cricket team has seen its share of bad moments. From its losses to India (WC 96), Bangladesh (WC 99), Ireland (WC 07) to first round exists in WC 03 & 07. But at the end of every defeat there was at least a sense of shame if not determination. However, this time Younis Khan has come up with the excuse of the century.

After losing to England in recent T20 World Cup, with a performance that would have put my high school Cricket team to shame, Younis Khan, the hailed captain of our mighty team delivered the ultimate press conference. Rather than accepting the short comings and showing determination to improve, he told the world that its OK if Pakistan are knocked out of first round.

Is he on drugs? Did someone dunk his head in toilet and made him lose all senses? Is the lack of Iodine affecting his brain? Did aliens abduct him and performed their notorious experiments on him?

Not a disaster? Its fun Cricket? I cant believe these words and what a huge joke it is with our country and cricket fans in Pakistan. I mean, here is a team that is treated as superstars, pampered to the height of being spoiled and raised like kings. When Pakistan plays a match, millions are glued to their television sets. People pray for them, defend them around the world, hail them, cheer every stroke, dance on every wicket taken. When Pakistan loses a match, people get heart attacks and break their televisions. They want Pakistan to win and make them proud. And our captain repays their faith by showing an utter non-seriousness towards the sport.

Yes, when Holland beat England, it was fun, but Mr. Younis was probably looking at the Holland camp who were very rightly celebrating. Mr. Younis should have tried reading some of the English papers who bashed the England team so hard that their ancestors would have felt the pain. Very rightly, the English team acknowledged their failure and bounced back in thumping manner.

May I remind you Mr. Younis that Pakistani nation and sports fans spend a huge amount of money on your grooming, fitness and travel. Every time you enter a tournament, you are representing Pakistan and carrying the hopes of the whole nation. If you do not have the desire to win and perform, please deprive us of your prestigious company. Let us see how much ‘fun’ you have when you are a nobody.

WWF stands for World Wild Life Federation which is hardly similar to T20 cricket. I am assuming Mr. Younis is referring to WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). He is unaware that WWF has been known as WWE for past 9 years, which pretty much explains his knowledge towards wrestling.

Imagine going to your boss and telling hims that skipping the deadline is not a disaster, the actors slacking because the movies are ‘just for fun’, game developers sleeping at work because ‘its entertainment’.

I believe that players should be accountable to someone. If they are not taking the responsibility seriously, they should be sacked and replaced with the people who are passionate and have a desire to win. Not some idiot who has fun at the expense of Pakistan Cricket fans. I wish I could write the comments all my colleagues gave about Mr. Younis, but my decent nature doesnt allow it. Its a sad sad period of Pakistan Cricket, when failure is not only acceptable, its celebrated.

I get a lot of irrelevant and annoying questions while talking to people, but none is more annoying than this one,

How much shares do you own in the company?

The weird thing is that it never comes from my friends, but from people who I cant befriend even in a million years. This is how it happens,

Random Guy: How is your company going?

Me: Going good by the grace of God, thanks

Some random chat about weather, sports & politics, nothing to indicate we are intimate friends

Random Guy: So, how much shares do you own in the company?

Me: (confused, trying to understand why he considers himself my best chum) hmm…well, I cant really tell you that.

Random Guy: OK I understand, but still, how much do you own?

Me: As I said, sorry, I cant tell you that

Random Guy: 50%, 40%, 30%?

Me: (getting annoyed) As I said, this in completely internal to company and I cant tell you that

Random Guy: OK, but how much do your partners own? Which one of you has the majority shares?

And this continues till I get pissed off and vow never to talk to this guy again. This question is so annoying that its almost offending. I am ethically as well as legally bound not to expose this to anyone. And certainly not to a random guy who clearly has no regard for my privacy.

Since most of the people dont seem to take hint from polite refusals, I ll spell it out for them,

No, you are not my best friend and I absolutely do not want to tell you how much shares I, or anyone of my partners owns, Period!

I meet a lot of students and budding entrepreneurs who are looking for advice ranging from projects, technology choices, academia, business and startups. The simple fact that someone chooses to listen to my opinion humbles me and I try my best to help them in best possible manner.

I was very intrigued by the post by Yaser on responsibilities of an advisor so I decided to highlight other side of the coin, the responsibilities of people seeking advice. So this post is for anyone who seeks advice from anyone whether he is an entrepreneur or not.

Why do you seek advice?

Asking for advice makes you vulnerable because what you decide next now depends on the input from someone other than yourself. It is important to know that you are vulnerable because you can then take steps to ensure that you dont make a hurried decision. Never commit to something during or immediately after the advice. The best way is to take some time, sleep over it and then make up your mind

Always ask the relevant advisor

This is one of the biggest mistake people make and not surprisingly. After all, the natural reaction of someone in trouble is to hang on to anything that is available. You should always ask the relevant person. This is difficult because you may not have a relevant person in your circle, but keep looking for the right person.

Mind the background

Every advice is loaded biased with the experience of the advisor. So when someone says “Compiler from Sir Shafiq is a terrible course” its probably because he had a bad experience with him. And when I say “If you didnt take Compiler from Sir Shafiq, you dont know Programming” its because I ve had great experience with him. An advice is not absolute and you can even get conflicting advices from the same person based on how his experience has changed.

Resist the decision

If you are seeking advice, its a good indication that you are confused. Consequently, you want to jump to the first decision that you hear. However, resist the temptation to make an easy escape into certainity. Do not take decision from others, in fact avoid the advisors who have a habit of making decisions for you.

Question the advice

This is difficult because you are already in a confused state but you should still question the advice. The process of reaching to the decision is extremely important because it identifies the issues and creates a roadmap for you.

Its your career

Every advice comes with a hidden disclaimer,

“Do not come back and blame me for if it doesnt work”

Always remembet that its YOUR career, its most valuable to you and not to someone else. Others can help you, assist you, advise you, but eventually its your life. You should make the decision yourself because the advisor will not take the responsibility of any kind. You should always have yourself to blame for and no one else.

This is also an advice

Everything above applies to this post as well

django employs cookies to track the user session. settings.SESSION_COOKIE_AGE defines the session expiration age in seconds. So, the user logs in once and can stay logged in for hours (even days).

But what if a user wants the session to expire as soon as the browser is closed? This is perfectly desirable for users on public/shared computers.

As always, django comes for rescue with a 5 minutes solution :). There is a variable SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE in settings.py, if set to True, django will expire session as users close the browser window.

So you have two options,

1. Policy 1: Keep user logged in as required
2. Policy 2: Expire the session when user closes the browser

So you’ve got your hands on that sexy looking iPhone (2G/3G), you are feeling really proud of yourself, looking down on all those Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson users.

Now you are showing it off to your friends, making them jealous by moving your fingers over the wide screen and enjoying the videos downloaded from youtube. When suddenly you realize,

It cannot make video!

WTH! suddenly you go from hero to zero. You quickly hide your iPhone and try to pretend from next time that you dont own one, only for your friends to bring that up and embarrass you.

I have no idea what Apple accomplished by providing a huge screen, crisp display, integrated YouTube! but not providing the video capture.

Cycorder brings video to iPhone, for free

As always, hackers came to the rescue and have now released an app Cycorder. The app is very simple, which is exactly it is supposed to do i.e. make video. The resolution is 384×288 at a reasonable FPS. What you need is a jailborken iPhone and simply install the Cycorder app from Cydia store or the app installer. And viola, you have video…and did I mention it was free

Images from:

http://www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2007/06/30/1182624213249.html

http://laughingsquid.com/barking-iphone/

This year when I decide to get a laptop, I initially wanted to buy a Mac Book. But I turned it down after looking at the price tag which to me was absurdly high. Instead decided to buy a Dell Vostro 1510 and then may be install Mac on it (just to say I am a Mac user)

I finally got my hands on Dell Vostro 1510 (notebook) in March this year. Then I went out on my quest to build a hackintosh out of the laptop. It took me more than 2 weeks nights, 2 full weekends and a full public holiday to get it working. So now my Dell Vostro 1510 is running MAC OS X 10.5.5 along with Vista with functional Ethernet, Wifi, Sound, Graphics card, (partial) touchpad. I am still working on the DV drive fix and hopefully get it soon.

It was a long and frustrating time, I tried the installation at least 30 times, every wrong installation took about an hour to undo and then try again. Corrupted and re-installed Vista twice, corrupted the partition table twice and spent 8 hours on recovery each time, screwed up the Mac’s successful installation twice as well :).

Why did I continue? Because I didnt want the Mac to win :P. And the fact that most people said it could not be done (except for a few at hackint0sh.org).

I ll try to post a detailed tutorial and list of resources used soon

A couple of days ago, I was using (or trying to use) Wateen wimax internet at home and I couldnt get more than 2 KB/sec. To make matters worse, my server crashed and I had to download a 10KB file, change it and upload it back to server. With the blazing speed of Wateen @ 2KB/sec it took me more than 1 hour to get it fixed (you can imagine the swearing that took place :)). After that I was angry and wanted to share this with others, so I sent a tweet via SMS.

And then I realized that I wasnt the only one doing this. People are using Twitter to tell everyone whet they are doing. And that includes their experiences with products and services. So Twitter actually has a huge repository of user feedback and reviews (search results for Nokia E71 and Quake 3). If Twitter can harness this repository and present a way to provide product/service/brand feedback, that would be a great service.

For consumers, knowing what other users think after practical experience of a product matters a lot. Its strange how much difference ‘I hate this thing x’ or ‘I just love using x’ comment makes. In many cases, feedback alone is enough to change your buying decision.

For companies, knowing customer response, feedback & satisfaction is a huge deal. Companies perform surveys, distribute forms, do market research and perform analysis. A lot of money can be made in this area.

Twitter can actually start providing market trend and customer feedback to brands & companies and charge them rather than individual users.

As I mentioned earlier, django provides a convenient and highly de-coupled way to manipulate URLs. At the heart of this functionality is django.core.urlresolver.reverse. This function however generates relative URLs e.g. /album/my-first-album/

At See’n'Report, we wanted every user to have a sub-domain so, hitting http://username.seenreport.com takes you to the user profile. But this created a small problem; all the URLs rendered on the profile page were relative. So a link on profile page like /profile/edit/ was treated as http://adilsaleem.seenreport.com/profile/edit/ and not http://seenreport.com/profile/edit/. So we had to generate absolute urls on profile page.

Thanks to my laziness, I decided to not append the domain name to every URL on profile page template. Instead, I sniffed around the django code for 3 hours looking for a single line solution :). It turned out django does provide a single line solution. The solution is the function,

django.core.urlresolvers.set_script_prefix

You can a url prefix to this function and all subsequent calls to reverse and url tag will generate absolute urls. So I placed a middleware like,

from django.core.urlresolvers import set_script_prefix
if subdomain accessed
      set_script_prefix('http://seenreport.com')
else:
      set_script_prefix('')

And there you go, you can now generate absolute URLS with minimum fuss