XGear - The pirate experience !

Startup Pirates is a one week acceleration program for entrepreneurs in the making. Basically, through a combination of training, mentoring and idea development they help participants structure and develop their ideas and in the end they give them the opportunity to pitch their ideas to investors and successful business leaders. Though I am a bit late on expressing my views on the pirate experience, but its never too late to do anything so here it goes.

It all started when I read somewhere on the internet that something was happening around Lahore to support young entrepreneurs developing their business ideas the name was so compelling that I decided to attend the event so I compiled my thoughts and filled out the form to participate. The event was planned to span over 8 days and 3 different locations, I was so excited to meet new people with great ideas.

The first three day were planned to be held at University of Lahore, the first day was for introductions and ice breaking sessions, I had some prior commitments on the first day so I couldn't attend hence I can't share much of what happened on the first day but the ones who attended the first day told me that it was an amazing experience, having a chit chat with the founding members #Rafael Pires. The second day started with a really energetic session by Mr. Sohail Zindani - Living your strongest life, his session was all about exploring the horizons and living your dreams, followed by the session the participants were told to pitch their ideas since I didn't attend the first day I was at first hesitant to share my idea but then I improvised and gave it a go to present the idea. I had a great opportunity to meet some of the very extra ordinary minds that very day including Anthony Williams, Muhammad Haroon, Muhammad Abbas, Fatima Rizwan, Muhammad Ali, Ijlal Baig they all had brilliant ideas. The third day started with meet-ups with industries success stories and interactive sessions from Irfan Elahi from TownTawks and Samir from Hybrid signals followed by a task based session by Dr. Umar Farooq on Competitor analysis and Strategic management this marked the end of the first three days of startup pirates at University of Lahore.

The next three days were held at University of Engineering and Technology, fourth day started with a session by Ms.Maryam Baqir Corporate Communications Specialist, Lahore Stock Exchange she was surprisingly forthright which resulted in her making a mark as someone one can never forget, after her session Mr. Muhammad Ali Information Security Professional, Lahore Stock Exchange shared some of his insightful thoughts on how to successfully manage projects after that we had some engagement activities among ourselves to refine our business ideas. The fifth day started with a working session by Mr. Muhammad Ali on project management activities followed by one of the very best sessions of the whole event by Mr. Arslan Larik he started with a bang and continued to be one of the very energetic session throughout. On the sixth day we didn't have to do much as Mr. Salim Ghauri didn't show up because he had some foreign delegation to attend to but the participants made full use of it by discussing the business models and the Lahore startup pirates team did a great job keeping the participants engaged.

The final two days were held at Lahore University of Management Sciences, with session by Mr. Jazib Zahir - Pakistan Business Development Advisor where he shared how the final pitch should be organized and afterwards had individual mentoring sessions with the participants followed by a session by Abbas Shahid Baqir from Student Shelter in Computers. On the eighth day we had to pitch our ideas to the judges and everyone was rated on the idea they had, everyone was a winner that day we all were transformed in a very good way.

Startup Pirates enabled us to tackle the challenges and overcome our fears of rejection and failure to make us true entrepreneurs at heart. The organizers did a great job Ali Awais Amin, Osman Ahmed, Sharjeel Nawaz, Umber Nawaz, Fatima Khurshid, Shoaib, Ali Raza and team. 

A visit to Plan 9

Plan9 is Pakistan’s first nationwide tech incubator. An aid to those Pakistanis who want to become aspiring entrepreneurs one day. They accept teams who are well integrated and are working on a tech based product. Young, fresh and inventive entrepreneurs fall back in developing the right connections, gaining expert attention and covering seed investment. Their incubation is one of a kind, a tailor-designed process !!

Incubators are a great place for young entrepreneurs to groom themselves for becoming ready for industry, and I think even if you are a year or two down the road and need some assistance you should join an incubation program.

It all started from a Session of Mr. Jawad Farid at Plan 9 which was about Pitching to Customers and Investors - A Crash Course, I wanted to attend this session because I had a product XGear which is still a work in progress, handling the technology aspect was not a very big challenge for our team but developing the business side and knowing how to pitch the product to investors was a challenge. I contacted Ms. Hafsa Shorish (Marketing and PR Manager Plan9) to ask if I could attend the session, she told me as per policy the session was only for incubates but I should send in my project description anyway, I took my chances and emailed a brief introduction of what the product was all about and to my surprise the generous team of Plan9 arranged a meeting out of Plan9 for me to benefit from Mr. Jawad Farid's knowledge.

We decided to meet at Avari Hotel over breakfast at 7:30 in the morning where I discussed the product in detail with Mr. Jawad and Mr. Nabeel (Program Manager Plan 9) and they gave me some really substantial insights on how I should prepare an elevated pitch, how to do customer segmentation, and how to make business and financial models for my product and by the end our meeting I had a chance to demo my software after which I was offered to pitch the idea in front of the Plan 9 board to further refine the idea.

After that session I really regretted the day I choose not to apply for Plan9, as if a one hour session could help me achieve this much I would have done wonders if I had an opportunity to attend the complete 3 days workshop on Pitching, and this was only one session out of the numerous given by the experts of industry. I believe that Plan9 is one of the best initiatives that Punjab Government has taken lately.

Keep up the good work !!

If you are wondering what my product was all about, here is a glimpse of XGear, it basically enable users to login to their cars from anywhere in the world using smartphones and computers to locate, monitor, control even diagnose their cars by communicating realtime with their vehicles.

Is youtube really blocked in Pakistan?

Pakistani government banned youtube several times following certain events but the last ban placed on September 17, 2012 is the by far the longest ban on youtube in Pakistan imposed by the government, because of the blasphemous content posted on the video sharing website. The government has taken desperate measures to take down the content by blocking the site altogether.

In my opinion, blasphemous content should be removed from the website on top priority and measures should be taken so that something of this sort and magnitude never happens again, but this generally is not how the internet works, we have to understand the dynamics of the internet to get to a solution for this problem.

With all due respect to the government of Pakistan, I think the actions government is currently taking are not capable of resolving this issue. Being a networks professional I know it is not very hard to implement content screening services to block specific URLs containing blasphemous content considering we find efficient ways to screen HTTPS service requests, but for how long will we keep on doing that, once we block everything on internet there will be new content for us to start over.

We have to think of a rational solution as the site hosts abundant educational content like khanacademy.org, the need to access such educational content has enabled even non-technical users to use proxy softwares to access the content? So, I fail to understand if youtube is really blocked in Pakistan when everyone can access the website by just installing a freely available proxy software to access the content. I think we should think out of the box to get this issue resolved, some of the solutions I can think of over the top of my head are:

1. Block youtube and all other video content hosting sites, provide alternates in Pakistan which replicate all educational videos and non blasphemous videos from all available content hosting sites to a pakistani video content hosting site so we have complete control. Just like China did.

2. Calculate MD5/SHA1 for the video and compare that with all the videos available on internet and search for identical MD5/SHA1 hashes and if any found the links are forwarded to some moderation authority to process.

3. We can do a frame by frame analysis on each and every video available on internet based on frames on blasphemous videos as there is a possibility that the uploader modifies the same video to change the MD5/SHA1 hash, for every video if it achieves a certain frame match threshold ratio the video is forwarded to the moderation team to take further actions.

4. We can start a crowdsource video tagging initiative where the end users tag video as inappropriate and the moderation team blocks the content.

Yes, I understand that method 2 and 3 would require a lot of compute power but this could be the only possible sustainable solution.

Please share your thoughts. 

Multiple instances of Skype

Ever wanted to run multiple instances of Skype without having to download third party multi messengers, here is how you can do that for windows and Mac

On your PC open a command prompt and type


cd /

cd "Program Files (x86)"
cd Skype
cd Phone

skype.exe /secondary /username:your-username /password:your-password



On your MAC open a terminal

ehmedk$ cd /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/
ehmedk$ sudo ./Skype

Type in your password and you have sucessfully started another instance of skype on your computer 

Eye-Fi

Ever wanted to make your camera wirelessly transfer photos to your PC. Eye-Fi enables your camera to do it even if your camera doesn't natively have wireless capabilities. For more information click here http://www.eye.fi/how-it-works/basics 

disconnect

Personal information should be treated with respect, you should be the steward of your digital self, and you shouldown your own data. But today, you’re getting a bum deal. Thousands of companies and organizations are taking, analyzing, and auctioning off things like the history of the webpages you go to and searches you do, without even telling you.

There is a platform to put you back in charge and let you decide who does what with your online data. Disconnect, Inc. is an award-winning startup based in Menlo Park, California. They make simple tools to help users understand and control the data they share on the web.

To download the plugin for your browser and take control of your data get https://disconnect.me/tools 

Light Metering

Proper exposure times are essential with any kind of photography, especially when you use slide film that has a narrow exposure range. Since the sky can have huge differences in brightness, it requires a bit of experience using your exposure meter properly. In some cases you won't get away with just aiming your camera at some part of the sky and taking a photo, putting all your faith in the camera's light meter.

Source: http://www.weatherscapes.com/techniques.php?cat=general&page=metering

Reducing Camera Shake

We've all likely encountered this problem many times: blurry photos due to camera shake with hand-held shots. It's especially prevalent for those of us who are unfortunate enough to have unsteady hands. While it cannot be eliminated entirely, fortunately there's a number of steps you can take to greatly reduce its impact — and hopefully prevent it from becoming visible in the first place.

Source: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-shake.htm

Intro to Portrait Lighting

Good lighting is a critical component of portraiture. It's also easily identifiable even by the casual observer. However, despite this apparent simplicity, knowing how to use light to achieve a desired look requires a much deeper understanding. This introductory tutorial discusses the most basic scenario: portraits with one light source. Subsequent tutorials will discuss setups with multiple lights, but the same principles discussed here still apply.

Source: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/portrait-lighting.htm

Fixing validation error for backup CID

cd \
cd root\adb
adb-windows devices <---- Make sure it finds your phone before continuing
adb-windows shell <----- You should see a $
$ /system/__unrevoked_su <---- Getting temp root # cat /dev/mtd/mtd0 > /sdcard/misc.img <---- Copying misc to your SD Card
# getprop ro.cid <----- This is your CID. Remember what this says, it should say something like HTC_000 or 1111111 if you have a goldcard
# exit
adb-windows pull /sdcard/misc.img misc.img <---- Getting the misc we copied before

You should now have a file called misc.img in the C:\root\adb folder.

Now come on to the IRC help channel here. We will stick the CID into the misc.img so you can carry on as it really is complicated. You can also post here if nobody is avalible and I will sort it ASAP.

(If you’ve done hex editing before, all you do is put the CID you got above in at position 0 then add a 00 at the end so the hex string looks something like “48 54 43 5F 5F 30 30 31 00“)

Make sure you save the file that we give you back to C:\root\adb overwriting the original misc.img file.

Next we’re going to push misc back on to the phone using a similar method to step 1. Have open a command prompt and cd to the correct directory as in step 1 before proceeding.

2) Type the following in the command prompt:

adb push misc.img /sdcard/new-misc.img <---- Pushing misc back to your SD card
adb-windows shell
$ /system/__unrevoked_su <---- getting temp root again
# /data/local/flash_image misc /sdcard/new-misc.img <---- Using flash_image to flash the new misc
# exit

Cropping

Often a photo will lack impact because the main subject is so small it becomes lost among the clutter of its surroundings. By cropping tight around the subject you eliminate the background 'noise', ensuring the subject gets the viewer's undivided attention.

Framing

The world is full of objects which make perfect natural frames, such as trees, archways and holes. By placing these around the edge of the composition you help to isolate the main subject from the outside world. The result is a more focused image which draws your eye naturally to the main point of interest.

Depth

Because photography is a two-dimensional medium, we have to choose our composition carefully to conveys the sense of depth that was present in the actual scene. You can create depth in a photo by including objects in the foreground, middle ground and background. Another useful composition technique is overlapping, where you deliberately partially obscure one object with another. The human eye naturally recognises these layers and mentally separates them out, creating an image with more depth.

Background

How many times have you taken what you thought would be a great shot, only to find that the final image lacks impact because the subject blends into a busy background? The human eye is excellent at distinguishing between different elements in a scene, whereas a camera has a tendency to flatten the foreground and background, and this can often ruin an otherwise great photo. Thankfully this problem is usually easy to overcome at the time of shooting - look around for a plain and unobtrusive background and compose your shot so that it doesn't distract or detract from the subject.

Viewpoint

Before photographing your subject, take time to think about where you will shoot it from. Our viewpoint has a massive impact on the composition of our photo, and as a result it can greatly affect the message that the shot conveys. Rather than just shooting from eye level, consider photographing from high above, down at ground level, from the side, from the back, from a long way away, from very close up, and so on.

Symmetry and Patterns

We are surrounded by symmetry and patterns, both natural and man-made., They can make for very eye-catching compositions, particularly in situations where they are not expected. Another great way to use them is to break the symmetry or pattern in some way, introducing tension and a focal point to the scene.

Leading Lines

When we look at a photo our eye is naturally drawn along lines. By thinking about how you place lines in your composition, you can affect the way we view the image, pulling us into the picture, towards the subject, or on a journey 'through' the scene. There are many different types of line - straight, diagonal, curvy, zigzag, radial etc - and each can be used to enhance our photo's composition.

Balancing Elements

Placing your main subject off-centre, as with the rule of thirds, creates a more interesting photo, but it can leave a void in the scene which can make it feel empty. You should balance the 'weight' of your subject by including another object of lesser importance to fill the space.

Rule of Thirds

Imagine that your image is divided into nine equal segments by two vertical and two horizontal lines. Try to position the most important elements in your scene along these lines, or at the points where they intersect. Doing so will add balance and interest to your photo. Some cameras even offer an option to superimpose a rule of thirds grid over the LCD screen, making it even easier to use.

Eclipse and Islam

A'isha, the wife of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "There was an eclipse of the sun in the time of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, led the people in prayer. He stood, and did so for a long time. Then he went into ruku, and made the ruku long. Then he stood again, and did so for a long time, though not as long as the first time. Then he went into ruku, and made the ruku long, though not as long as the first time. Then he rose, and went down into sajda. He then did the same in the second raka, and by the time he had finished the sun had appeared. He then gave a khutba to the people, in which he praised Allah and then said, 'The sun and the moon are two of Allah's signs. They do not eclipse for anyone's death nor for anyone's life. When you see an eclipse, call on Allah and say, "Allah is greater" and give sadaqa.' Then he said, 'O community of Muhammad! ByAllah, there is no-one more jealous than Allah of a male or female slave of his who commits adultery. O community of Muhammad! By Allah, if you knew what I knew, you would laugh little and weep much'."
{Malik's Muwatta}