Codestin Search App

My ActiveState Code recipes

Follow me on: LinkedIn * Twitter

Are you a blogger with some traffic? Get Convertkit:

Email marketing for professional bloggers

Share |

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

BuffaloGrid, mobile power and internet service for the off-grid world

By Vasudev Ram

Saw this today. Seems somewhat interesting:

BuffaloGrid is a startup that describes itself as a "mobile power and internet service for the off-grid world".

BuffaloGrid - What/

BuffaloGrid - Why/

BuffaloGrid - Customers/

- Vasudev Ram - Online Python training and consulting

Get updates (via Gumroad) on my forthcoming apps and content.

Jump to posts: Python * DLang * xtopdf

My ActiveState Code recipes

Follow me on: LinkedIn * Twitter

Are you a blogger with some traffic? Get Convertkit:

Email marketing for professional bloggers

Share |

Friday, January 20, 2017

SiteTruth, interesting startup

By Vasudev Ram

SiteTruth is an early-stage startup with an interesting product, that I got to know about today.

Excerpt from their About page above:

[ Conventional wisdom is that search spam can't be stopped.
Conventional wisdom is wrong.

SiteTruth exists to solve one of the Web's biggest problems - web spam, unidentified, and possibly fake, on-line businesses.

Every on-line commerce web site must display the name and address of the business behind the site. That's the law in much of the developed world. SiteTruth tries to identify that business, then find information about it. That check is used to influence search rankings. That's SiteTruth.

Sites which sell, but have no identifiable business behind them, are down-rated. "Doorway pages", "affiliate sites", and anonymous businesses receive low ratings. Identifiable, verifiable businesses get good ratings. The marginal businesses, the ones that the customer can't find when they need a refund, get low ratings. ]

- Vasudev Ram - Online Python training and consulting

Get updates (via Gumroad) on my forthcoming apps and content.

Jump to posts: Python * DLang * xtopdf

My ActiveState Code recipes

Follow me on: LinkedIn * Twitter

Managed WordPress Hosting by FlyWheel

Share |

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Startup sighting of the day: Doorman

By Vasudev Ram

Doorman

Just saw about this startup via them liking a recent tweet of mine:

Doorman

From their Twitter account's bio:

[ @Doorman
The delivery startup that is creating a world where online shoppers never see a missed delivery notice or have packages stolen ever again. Support: @DoormanHelp
San Francisco, CA doorman.co ]

Haven't checked it out yet, and also it may be US-only, since it is related to delivery. Might be worth checking out for those there.

- Vasudev Ram - Online Python training and consulting

Get updates on my software products / ebooks / courses.

Jump to posts: Python DLang xtopdf

- Vasudev Ram - Online Python training and programming

My ActiveState recipes

Share |

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Video: Rails creator DHH interview by Jason Calacanis on This Week in Startups

By Vasudev Ram

Saw this video via a Disqus comment:

Video: Rails creator DHH interviewed by Jason Calacanis on This Week in Startups

Started watching, seems interesting. Might want to skip some of the start where a show viewer calls in, to get to the main story.

At some part it is like the interviewee is interviewing the interviewer. Video also embedded below.

Signup to hear about new products and services I create.

Posts about Python Posts about xtopdf

My ActiveState recipes

Share |

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Paperweight from Paperspace (YC) - a better PC in the cloud

By Vasudev Ram

Just saw this via Twitter.

Paperweight is a small hardware device from Paperspace, a Y Combinator startup that recently came out of stealth mode, according to the Paperspace about page.

Here is a post about Paperspace on the Y Combinator Posthaven (blog):

Paperspace (YC W15) Lets Anyone Access A Better Personal Computer That Lives In The Cloud

This video about Paperspace is good :-) Make sure to watch the whole thing - it's short.

If the embed above doesn't work, view the video here:

Paperspace video

The idea for the Paperspace computer-in-the-cloud may not be entirely new, since it seems to be (roughly) a sort of thin client, like the erstwhile Sun Ray, but it does seem innovative, overall.

I guess it could be called a PCaaS (PC as a Service :-)

- Vasudev Ram - Online Python training and programming

Dancing Bison Enterprises

Signup to hear about new products or services from me.

Posts about Python Posts about xtopdf

Share |

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Digital nomad lifestyle on the rise

Signup to hear about new products or services from me.

[ Rider in Mongolia ]

Over the last several months, and even up to a year or more ago, I've been coming across many articles and blog posts on the Net that talk about digital nomads and their lifestyles. Many of them run their own businesses - or work on bootstrapping their startups - via the Internet (and phone / fax, etc.), from different world locations that they travel to, and stay at.

I've done it some myself in the past - traveling to various places, and spending some time in each, while running my consulting and training business.

It's an interesting approach to work, and has some pros and cons, which also depends partly on what line of work you are in, what kind of clients you have, the infrastructure in the places you go to, etc.

[ Romani wagon in Germany ]

Here's an article I just recently read about the digital nomad lifestyle:

How I built a startup while traveling to 20 countries

If you do a web search for digital nomad(s), you'll find a lot of articles.

Here's a post I wrote a while ago about Teleport, a startup that calls itself a 'search engine for digital nomads.':

Teleport, new Andreessen Horowitz startup

Speaking of nomads, as a kid, I had read this novel which is about a gypsy's life:

Lavengro (on Wikipedia)

From the Wikipedia article:

"Lavengro was included in the Oxford University Press World's Classics series in 1904, and in Everyman's Library in 1906.[10]"

You can download it or read it here on Project Gutenberg:

Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest by George Borrow

Shoon thimble-engro;
Avella gorgio.

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

Share |

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Google Capital coming to invest in India

Signup to hear about new products or services from me.

Google Capital is coming to India to set up base from which invest in Indian startups, says the Economic Times.

Excerpts:

[ is setting up its growth capital arm in India to double down on startup investing as it turns bullish on fast-growing local emerging companies that have drawn attention from big investors across the world.
...
will hire a team and invest in growth-stage companies in India, a market in which investors ranging from Japanese communications group SoftBank to Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba have recently made big bets. "It made a lot of sense to focus a lot of attention here now," David Lawee, partner at Google Capital
...
A serial entrepreneur, Lawee counts the move to set up office in India as "the most important" decision Google Capital has made in recent months
...
"I want to invest up to the limit of what's reasonable," said Lawee, who was the head of corporate development at Google until 2012.
...
While Google Capital, founded in 2013, has invested nearly $500 million in 11 companies globally, India will be its first destination where it has an office outside the US.
...
The California-based company also invests in early-stage companies through Google Ventures. "The companies that I'm seeing here have much more upside than most companies I'm seeing in the US," said Lawee. ]

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

Share |

Monday, February 9, 2015

pmarca - Marc Andreessen's blog as an ebook

Signup to hear about my new products.

Click image above to skip reading this post and go grab the book :)
Gotta like the Venn diagram on that page.

Saw this today:

Marc Andreessen, a.k.a. @pmarca on the internets, has made many of the good posts from his blog available as an ebook - which is free to download. You can get it here:

The Pmarca Blog Archive Is Back… as an Ebook

The title of the book (in the PDF) is:

The Pmarca Blog Archives

(select posts from 2007-2009)

Excerpt from Marc Andreessen's page on Wikipedia:
[ He is best known as coauthor of Mosaic, the first widely used Web browser; as cofounder of Netscape Communications Corporation;[3] and as cofounder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen is also a cofounder of Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites. ... Andreessen is one of only six inductees in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame announced at the first international conference on the World Wide Web in 1994 ]

Just downloaded the book and scanned the table of contents to get an idea of what it contains. I found that many of the post were ones which I had read on his blog some years earlier, when he was actively blogging. At the time I had thought that the posts were really good, and still do. They're probably worth reading - by downloading the book - for anyone who has not read them before, and even for people who have. I'm going to read the book myself in the next few days.

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

Share |

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Good HN thread on scaling a web app to 10K users

Signup to hear about new products or services from me.

Saw this today on Hacker News:

What does it take to run a web app with 5K – 10K users?

I read the thread. Found that it had a number of good comments, on both sides of the equation - the business side, i.e. acquiring, retaining and supporting users, and the technical side, i.e. scaling the hardware and software to manage the load on the app. Many of the people who commented, run their own web apps at the same or higher scale.

Overall, a worthwhile read, IMO.

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

Share |

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Teleborder facilitates labor immigration through technology

Signup to hear about new products or services from me.

Seen via Hacker News.

Teleborder's goals seems interesting.

Teleborder is a startup that is trying "to bring free movement of labor to the world through technology. Right now, that means helping companies manage immigration, tax, and relocation for their expatriate employees. We grew our customer base 10x in 2014 and are looking to beat that in 2015. We're currently a tight-knit team of 13 and well funded by top tier investors, including YC (S13)."

The picture above is of a Chinese passport from the Qing Dynasty, 24th Year of the Guangxu Reign - 1898.
From Wikipedia.

- Vasudev Ram - Python programming and training

Share |

Monday, December 15, 2014

Indian couple (1 Xoogler) buys small US bank, innovates online payments

Interesting story of innovation in the financial space, involving an Indian couple (of whom one is a Xoogler a.k.a ex-Googler), a small US bank, and cheaper / faster online money transfers / payments:

(Did you know that the English word bank supposedly comes from the old Italian word banca (for bench)?

An Indian couple has bought a small bank in Weir, Kansas, USA, and is using it to innovate in the online financial payments / money transfers space (while preserving and improving the existing brick-and-mortar business of the bank). The site through they allow faster / cheaper payments or money transfers from the US to India (and currently, or soon, other countries), is globalremit.com. Their rate for sending a payment under $1000 USD is $2.50, which works out to 0.25 percent. For above $1000, it is free (disclaimer: all this is according to what I saw on the site recently).

Suresh Ramamurthi earlier worked at Google on the Checkout product, and Suchitra Padmanabhan earlier worked at Lehman Brothers and Bankers Trust.

I saw this news via this tweet by Quentin Hardy (@qhardy), Deputy Tech Editor, The New York Times. (Saw it from a retweet by Bernard Lunn.)

The tweet goes thusly:

"Guy from India learns payments at Google, buys tiny Kansas bank, transforms money. Great, from @nathanielpopper dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/sma…"

And here is the New York Times article referred to in the tweet:

Small Bank in Kansas Is a Financial Testing Ground

Signup for email about new products from Vasudev Ram.

Share |

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Scaled Inference, a cloud AI startup by ex-Googlers, gets Khosla Ventures $8M funding

Saw the news via this tweet by @asenkut - Aydin Senkut, Google's first product manager, and founder of Felicis Ventures.

Here is a TechCrunch article about the funding of Scaled Inference by Khosla Ventures:

Excerpts from the article:

[
Scaled Inference, a startup founded by two ex-Googlers that is building a cloud-based platform for third parties that want to use artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to run their apps and services – has raised another round of funding to continue its development and hiring, a Series A round of $8 million from Khosla Ventures.
...
has been putting together some of the first products (or services) that will run on top of that platform: pattern recognition, anomaly detection, prediction, and predictive ranking, which will be accessible by developers by way of a set of APIs.
...
As an example of where pattern recognition might be applied, he says, take a bank or credit card company like Visa.
...
“The pattern recognition APIs can then be used to detect correlations such as increased spending during certain time periods, at certain locations, by certain customers, on certain items, for certain combinations of these attributes,” he says. In turn, this type of insight can help guide important business decisions
...
this is a long-term vision, but this is one of the reasons that Scaled Inference went with the investors that it has done, Sercinoglu says. “Vinod Khosla is a long term investor, one of the longest-term thinkers in the business, and ours is a long term vision for AI and machine learning. That really resonated with him.”

Longer term, he says, “We seek to offer the same powerful technology as a public cloud API to everyone and for virtually any application; anything from personalized magazines to intelligent context-sensitive address books, app launchers, e-commerce sites,
]
They are not open to the public yet.

The idea seems interesting, not just for the applications mentioned, but also for the fact that they plan to offer the service as a public cloud API, available to everyone, so looks like it could have a lot of potential.

Sign up to know about new products from me..

Share |

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

LowFundWala, startup to create videos for startups

LowFundWala is a recent Indian startup that creates videos for other startups (and also for established companies). They call themselves a startup for startups.

I read about it a newspaper. The concept seems interesting and useful. They also claim to have got some early traction, a.k.a. customers and revenue (unlike the wannabe Zuck type of startup :)

I read in the newspaper that they do videos ranging from low priced to high priced ones.

Promotion of startups' products is one of the applications of the videos they make. They are also supposed to me somewhat of an end-to-end outfit, in that they do everything related to the video themselves, instead of getting parts of the work done by others.

LowFundWala may be worth checking out for Indian or other startups that want to get some videos made for such purposes.

Here is an article about LowFundWala on indianweb2.com.

Click here for email about new products from Vasudev Ram.

Share |

Monday, October 27, 2014

Pulley, site to sell your downloadable stuff

Pulley (pulleyapp.com) is a site that allows you to sell your downloadable stuff of any kind. It seems to be something like Gumroad.

I got to know about Pulley via an email newsletter that I get.

From the home page of the Pulley site:

[ Pulley is a simple way to sell your digital art, music, videos, photography, fonts, eBooks, software, and other downloadable products. ]

They have a 14-day free trial (*). Their plans start from $6 per month and can be seen here.

(*) To use the free trial, you have to sign up for one of the paid trials, and then cancel withing 14 days if you don't want to pay and continue using the service. The site says that no credit card is required to sign up.

Click here to signup for email about new products from Vasudev Ram.