Hey Guys,

I attended Proto.in yesterday. One of the biggest changes that happened at this event was that, it became a one day event rather than the usual two day event. Of all the sessions that happened, keynote talk by Mr. Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar and the “Angels can help you fly!” discussion from Mumbai Angels were very good.

The Event

This time, there were 15 products from a variety of areas including but not limited to Education, Internet and Mobile, Software etc. I liked the presentations from the companies namely English Seeko (a dial-in solution by phone to learn spoken English). Even though their demo was good, they would have lot of challenges with speech recognition. Then I liked the Credit Card Reconciliation System from Aerosoft. It was a very well put together presentation and I immediately understood their product’s validity from their presentation.

There was two presentations that did blow the audience away. One was from TouchMagix about their Microsoft-Surface-like product. Other was this launch of custom made bikes by Vardenchi Motorcycles in the range of Rs. 2.8 lakhs to Rs. 10 lakhs. They are already profitable and they brought 2 of their custom made bikes to the Proto.in stage to showcase them to the audience. They looked beautiful. When funds allow, I will surely design & get my own bike from them.

There was another company with the name GoVasool. Their presentation reminded me of the product named SpotEazy that presented during the first Proto.in in 2007. I couldn’t get their concept of why vendors would compete with each other to give a lower price for a select group of people. And then there was Vrixx (pronounced as vri-ksh), a end-to-end college management product, based on the all prevalent SaaS model.

Mumbai Angels

Near the end of the event, Mumbai Angels announced that they would pick two startups from the lot and give them the opportunity to present to the angels at their offices for funding. They picked Vrixx and TouchMagix. Congrats guys! It seems ConWizta (content management and testing application) missed that by a narrow margin.

Links

  1. Proto.in Live.
  2. Company Profiles.
  3. Send feedback to startups.

It was a good way to spend the weekend and this event is making me feel guilty every time because I haven’t started up yet.

Michael Jackson: Beat It

July 22nd, 2009

Okay, its kind of shameful to disclose this. But here goes.

Only after a day of MJ’s death did I come to know that the famous “Beat It” song was created by him. I have heard that song numerous times on various occasions. But all I felt was, “Damn this song man! Who can ever sing with such a stupid voice … I hate it!”. MJ’s death did little to clear that opinion cos’ I felt, “Common … MJ cannot have done this crap.”

But, I soon realized that I couldn’t really enjoy the song because I didn’t lend my ears to the lyrics and this link came to help. The second time I was pouring over the lyrics, I fell in love with it. Especially the line where he says, “Showin’ how funky and strong is your fight; It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right“. That was an awesome line. Then with the lyrics in front of me, I ran through the song again & this time, I could begin to like it. The bunch of gangsters in the youtube video were pretty helpful too.

So… all in all, I’m just kind of getting started on MJ. If you have recommendations, let me know of them in the comments and I shall be grateful 🙂

P.S. While you are here, you might want to drool over his dance on the Dangerous live performance video. My favourites are the dance sequences at 0:22 – 0:38 (at this place, the guy on right side of the video does an awesome stunt) and 0:51 – 1:01. Then the most awesome sequence is at 1:30 – 1:40. In this sequence MJ throws the guy with the gun on the ground. Just see how perfectly he falls and remains flat for a second. Also see the way he creatively moves behind the dance crew at 1:40. Perfect. Just perfect. Then notice how the dance crew crawls into the scene at 1:51 😀 Man! So much perfection. And then the dance sequence from 3:21 – 3:37. Watch MJ in the center. MJ is a magician in many respects.

Webbynode Invites

July 21st, 2009

Update: The invites have been used.

As mentioned in this Webbynode blog post, I happen to be one of the current VIP users having five invites. That’s right… five awesome invites. If you are looking for a VPS with a 15% discount for the rest of your life, this could be your chance to get it.

Post a comment with your email id and I shall send you an invite. First come, first served 🙂

Enjoy!