App Hub - App Sales report now available!!!

Back in Mid October Microsoft launched App Store. Like Apple’s iTunes connect or Google’s Android Developer Console, Windows Phone 7 has a centralized location called App Hub for developers to submit apps, manage account details, and request support .

The problem with the App hub is developers where not able to track the sales report. I have already discussed about the importance of collecting metrics if you are an app developer in this post.

Now that issue is resolved, App Hub gained a new “Reports” tab, wherein developers can generate sales reports based on any time frame since launch, drilled down to any country with access to the Windows Phone 7 market.

One more good news is Microsoft initially announced that they will not be able to pay developers until February, but yesterday they announced that they will be able to start sending out checks in January itself.

But unlike Android or iOS Microsoft lacks the appeal for developers to bring new apps to their platform and there are lot of issues with App Hub . Let us see how Microsoft resolves all the issues and build a cult around its new platform.

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Chrome OS Pilot Program

As I said earlier Chrome OS is coming. Google will be distributing a notebook called Cr-48 which runs Chrome OS. These are not for sale, they are designed as a test unit. Consumers will be able to apply for this, however, but Google isn’t giving it away to just anyone. On its Facebook Fan Page, they ran a promotion a couple days, announcing a sticker for a Chrome laptop, if you did that quiz, you have a chance of winning a notebook. If you go to youtube.com/googlechrome and make a video showing why you’re an ideal candidate for this, you’ll have a chance to snag a notebook. And if you don’t fall into any of those buckets, you can go to this page to apply.

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Julian Assange Arrested

In my earlier post  about the cable gate, I was wondering about what could happen if Assange was an Indian releasing dozens of classified documents of Indian politicians. 

Well, its all over for now at least for Assange not for the WikiLeaks though. Julian Assange was arrested yesterday in UK (He surrendered himself for facing the sex crime charges against him).  Earlier interpol had issued a "Red Notice" against Assange for sex crime raised in Sweden. He was even denied bail with the reason being he has a “nomadic life”, refused to give his address and there is no record of his entry to the UK. 

The biggest challenge for him is to escape from the American authorities. Now that British government is considering extraditing Assange to Sweden. If British authorities grant the Swedish request, Assange would be flown to a country that shares a significantly stricter extradition treaty with the United States. Swedish extradition treaty with the United States does not cover crimes that are political and military in nature.

Since Assange is an Australian citizen with a valid Australian passport, the Australian government is in a fix. The supporters of Assange in Australia has planned mass agitation against government if Assange is eventually extradited to the United States. However Australian government has planned to provide Consular support to Assange.

So the moral of the story is you will nailed if you expose someone.

Note: Assange is leading Time Magazine person of the year poll.

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Investing Early

I was talking to my friends brother who recently joined a software company, after a while we where discussing about investing. Then I asked him how much of savings he has, I hear him saying that it is too early for him to think about savings. The problem is that he fails to remember that age is proportional to the commitment and the commitment is inversely proportional to the savings power.

Some people in mid 30's say that "hey I got a home for 35Lakhs and I am paying an EMI of 35000 per month, thats a lot of savings so why should I invest extra". My question is why you consider your EMI as an investment? home loan has two components in it Principal and Interest. Buying an house is a good investment but did we really sell it in crisis situation? Real estate is a tough bet, you cant guarentee its appreciation, a slum clearence board or garbage dumping yard project near your plot may be a severe blow to its value, moreover it has poor liquidity.

Investing  is not only about preserving your capital, it is about earning modest interest with moderate risk. It is not neccessary that you need atleast 1 Lakh to begin investing. Starting early with waterver money even with Rs.2000 per month will also have a great impact on your savings on later part of your life. I will present a small illustration which will show some power of investing early

Let's compare two friends – Ondipuli and Kaipulai. Ondipuli starts saving Rs 50000 per year from the time he is 25. After 10 years he decides to stop investing. By that time the investment grows to Rs. 8.77  Lakhs assuming 10% intrest. 

Ondipuli lets the Rs 8.77 Lakh grow and assuming that it continues to earn a reurn of 10% every year he would have been able to accumulate around Rs. 95 Lakhs by the time he turns 60. So the Rs 5 Lakhs (50000 * 10) he had invested in first 10 years has grown to Rs 95 Lakhs.

On the other hand, Kaipullai starts investing Rs 50000 per year when he is 35 and continues investing this amount every year till he is 60. i.e for 25 years. Assuming he also earns a return of 10% every year, he would have been able to save only Rs. 54 Lakhs.

Even after investing Rs 50000 regularly for 25 years, Kaipullai has managed to accumulate Rs 54 Lakhs, which is around Rs 41 Lakh less that Ondipulli.

As the corpus grows the impact of compounding is greater. Ondipuli as we know managed to accumulate Rs 8.7 lakh after 10 years and then stopped investing after that and left the corpus grow for another 25 years. Let us say he had allowed the corpus to grow only for 20 years then he would have accumulated a corpus of Rs 59 lakh, by letting it grow for another 5 years he managed to get Rs 36 Lakh more.

What are you waiting for? Start investing right away!!!


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Dennis Gartman’s Trading Rules List

1. Never, under any circumstance add to a losing position…. ever! Nothing more need be said; to do otherwise will eventually and absolutely lead to ruin!
2. Trade like a mercenary guerrilla. We must fight on the winning side and be willing to change sides readily when one side has gained the upper hand.
3. Capital comes in two varieties: Mental and that which is in your pocket or account. Of the two types of capital, the mental is the more important and expensive of the two. Holding to losing positions costs measurable sums of actual capital, but it costs immeasurable sums of mental capital.
4. The objective is not to buy low and sell high, but to buy high and to sell higher. We can never know what price is “low.” Nor can we know what price is “high.” Always remember that sugar once fell from $1.25/lb to 2 cent/lb and seemed “cheap” many times along the way.
5. In bull markets we can only be long or neutral, and in bear markets we can only be short or neutral. That may seem self-evident; it is not, and it is a lesson learned too late by far too many.
6. “Markets can remain illogical longer than you or I can remain solvent,” according to our good friend, Dr. A. Gary Shilling. Illogic often reigns and markets are enormously inefficient despite what the academics believe.
7. Sell markets that show the greatest weakness, and buy those that show the greatest strength. Metaphorically, when bearish, throw your rocks into the wettest paper sack, for they break most readily. In bull markets, we need to ride upon the strongest winds… they shall carry us higher than shall lesser ones.
8. Try to trade the first day of a gap, for gaps usually indicate violent new action. We have come to respect “gaps” in our nearly thirty years of watching markets; when they happen (especially in stocks) they are usually very important.
9. Trading runs in cycles: some good; most bad. Trade large and aggressively when trading well; trade small and modestly when trading poorly. In “good times,” even errors are profitable; in “bad times” even the most well researched trades go awry. This is the nature of trading; accept it.
10. To trade successfully, think like a fundamentalist; trade like a technician. It is imperative that we understand the fundamentals driving a trade, but also that we understand the market’s technicals. When we do, then, and only then, can we or should we, trade.
11. Respect “outside reversals” after extended bull or bear runs. Reversal days on the charts signal the final exhaustion of the bullish or bearish forces that drove the market previously. Respect them, and respect even more “weekly” and “monthly,” reversals.
12. Keep your technical systems simple. Complicated systems breed confusion; simplicity breeds elegance.
13. Respect and embrace the very normal 50-62% retracements that take prices back to major trends. If a trade is missed, wait patiently for the market to retrace. Far more often than not, retracements happen… just as we are about to give up hope that they shall not.
14. An understanding of mass psychology is often more important than an understanding of economics. Markets are driven by human beings making human errors and also making super-human insights.
15. Establish initial positions on strength in bull markets and on weakness in bear markets. The first “addition” should also be added on strength as the market shows the trend to be working. Henceforth, subsequent additions are to be added on retracements.
16. Bear markets are more violent than are bull markets and so also are their retracements.
17. Be patient with winning trades; be enormously impatient with losing trades. Remember it is quite possible to make large sums trading/investing if we are “right” only 30% of the time, as long as our losses are small and our profits are large.
18. The market is the sum total of the wisdom … and the ignorance…of all of those who deal in it; and we dare not argue with the market’s wisdom. If we learn nothing more than this we’ve learned much indeed.
19.  Do more of that which is working and less of that which is not: If a market is strong, buy more; if a market is weak, sell more. New highs are to be bought; new lows sold.
20. The hard trade is the right trade: If it is easy to sell, don’t; and if it is easy to buy, don’t. Do the trade that is hard to do and that which the crowd finds objectionable. Peter Steidlmayer taught us this twenty five years ago and it holds truer now than then.
21. There is never one cockroach! This is the “winning” new rule submitted by our friend, Tom Powell.
22. All rules are meant to be broken: The trick is knowing when… and how infrequently this rule may be invoked.

[Source: http://www.tischendorf.com]

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Building Mobile App for living?

Gone are the days where Smartphone’s were used only by business professionals for quick communication. The emergence of iPhone redefined the way smartphone are used; it tapped the youth potential, who started using Smartphone’s for entertainment purpose.  Even the darling of corporate users “Blackberry” started their rebranding exercise a few months back(Remember “We are Blackberry boys” add).

In India the Smartphone’s that are not affordable to masses is getting changed with the launch of Micromax’s  Andro A60 which costs only Rs.8000. This opens up enormous amount of opportunity for software professionals, freelancers to consider App development as a serious business opportunity.  There are plenty of platforms to address like Windows Mobile, Android, iOS etc.

But the problem with this market is lack of proper business strategy, many people have cool App ideas but they refuse to look beyond just developing the App. Here are few points which I feel every aspiring App developer should consider

• What is the pain point which you are trying to solve with your App? Is it going to be a viral app where everyone starts using it whenever they are free or is it going to be used on a need basis?
• Can you build a framework where you can rapidly create different App’s? Like Farmville where it can build Cityville rapidly.
• Addressing multiple platforms with the same successful App helps to increases the customer base.
• Focus should also be on making the App to work in mixed environment like with/without internet. My thought is to start using sms as a medium of communication for building social Apps. It will help to attract people in country like India. An innovative game I recently came across is cWicket, it is an Audio Game designed for in-call delivery over telephony networks. NO Downloads, NO Data plans, NO GPRS, just a simple number to dial & play. It’s not an App though, but think about some innovation like that.
• Identifying the business model: can you sell your app one time and generate revenue or can you make it work on a fermium model or can you constantly engage users and generate revenue with add?
• Providing frequent updates is essential an app should not be built and forget. Focus is on to constantly innovate and enhance the app or find ways to develop a bouquet of app which interacts with each other.
• Measuring the performance is a key to success, don’t just look the number of downloads as the only metrics, start collecting metrics like daily usage, time spent on app, paid upgrade conversion.

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Indian Hackers paid tribute to 26/11 martyr

More than 35 websites of Pakistan government including Pakistan Navy, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Assembly, Pakistan's Military Account and the Ministry of Science and Technology have been hacked by the Indian hackers code named Indian Cyber Army on Tuesday. They have posted the picture of Indian flag and patriotic songs in those websites as a tribute to 26/11 martyr.  In the era were China is very aggressive in Cyber War fare, it is better that our government uses the service of these hackers to protect our servers. Already there is a rumor that the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) along with Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) is working on for creating cyber-offensive capabilities. NTRO is a key government agency that gathers technical intelligence while DIA is tasked with collating inputs from the Navy, Army and Air Force.


The hackers had inserted the following page on the websites declaring that they had successfully rooted the server. This is just to prove that they can deface the website too.

Rest In Peace
The Hero's of 26/11 Who Lai their precious life for the country people

OMG!! INDIAN CYBER ARMY 0Wns YoU
Pakistan's Main Gov Server 0wned? r00ted? Hell Yes It iS ;)
Everything is in our hands now .
If You Wanna See The Mighty Indian Flag On Your FIA Then Dare To Touch the Indian Servers. We Are Not Scared of Being Caught For Doing This B'coz We are Not doing for Showoff or E-Fame Like You Guys we are Doing for Our Country and If we are going down Hell We'll Take You Also With us So Decide your self Want Fun or Your life? as our motto goes For INDIA AnYThing and We Are Ready to do anything
Defacing 80% of Your Whole Gov Server n0w The Rest Will depend on you
Well Well Wel from ica n indishell only 4 members defaced rooted servers on 26/11 b'coz we are Least Intrested in your F***** WeBsiTes
you guyz started barking & defacing indian sites wid msg tat u'll destroy indian cyber space .. plz use some new lines
Why dont you Guys Understnd

y0ur Countries FutuRe is in trouble
aNd Bc0z of some Idiot Pakistanis whole Pakistan is being given Bad words....
we were not intrested in defacemnts but you guyz .. forced us to show your limits & What is INDIAN POWER

we aRe :- -[SiLeNtp0is0n]- , LuCkY, InX_ro0t , jackh4x0r, Darkl00k ,Ne0h4ck3r , Mr52 , Th3.rdx , Str1k3r , G00gl3warr10r , Atuldwivedi , c00lt0ad , eXesouL
Greets :- All INDIAN HACKERS and INDISHELL TEAM .. 

[Source: http://www.zone-h.com/archive/notifier=indiancyberarmy/page=2]]


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