Grabbing Hanuman’s Long Tail

While an appendicitis is a painful, uncomfortable and ultimately debilitating condition - one which I have suffered with for over a year, its remedy (Laproscopic surgery, way too much money to an evil hospital, a shitton of painkillers and a week of bedrest) is fairly tame as far as surgical procedures go.

PHPitis is another condition I have been suffering from. It’s not early as painful and has provided me with a decent income and professional growth. It is also not a pussy inflamed organ with no apparent value pressing up against all the nicely formed and functioning organs around it. However, the feeling that there is something not right “down there” remains.

I’ve always known that python is the best language out there. I don’t mean to start yet another stupid language fight, because every language is fine and dandy. But honestly, every programmer I respect has told me the same thing, they wish they could just write python. The only knocks against python are:

• Lack of hosting options
• Lack of Jobs / Skilled personnel

The first one, is obviously stupid, because it is as easy to run as PHP, but is totally chicken and egg. The second is pretty much the same. You have to be a better programmer to write python, and so there are less people who can, so there are less CTOs wanting to risk a language with less people available.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I love python, and I’m not that good at it yet, because I never get jobs in it, and it’s hard to get clients signed up for something that isn’t hosted anywhere…. Until now.

A day before I went to the hospital for an examination into yet another bout of my awful stomach pains which turned into the aforementioned surgery, I got my App Engine key in the mail.

I am affraid of the big G as much as anyone, and this offering is too new to judge. I won’t bore everyone with the questions everyone is asking about if your code can be moved or not, what is the guarantee they will keep it around, etc. I just want to say that the data api and the security of knowing that such terse syntax with so much power will scale till the end of the googleverse is exciting.

I highly recommend everyone give it a whirl, and discover / rediscover beautiful code. I was thinking of “killer apps” to build on it. My first inclination is that the “killer app” for the gapjinn (as I have now started calling it) is something with the following characteristics:

Uses Google Apps data apis

As much as possible, the application should store it’s data in google sites, google docs, google calendar, etc. This is because google will always have a commitment to making these two platforms work together AND you will not be made irrelevant because you can’t integrate.

Uses Google Apps provisioning APIs

Because SaaS is in, and you will want to make setup super easy.

Uses Google for authentication

Because you will not survive in the enterprise if you can’t take advantage of single sign-on services. As long as you are using all the google apps stuff, you should authenticate the same way.

Is niche enough that it does something better / easier / more focused than native google apps
OR

Provides an integration between different google apps and a 3rd party service

On the first count, it’s about creating a wrapper, basically a new interface layer to an existing google apps platform. Sometimes simple is too simple. For instance, using a series of tags and and a small amount of data store in the Google BigTable, I bet you create a really quick and dirty CRM using google contacts + gmail + google sites + google calendar.

On the second, I think the potential to provide bridge functionality between more mature best of breed apps like basecamp, unfuddled, salesforce, will make quick enterprise dashboards possible. Something like a dashboard / middleware layer between this stuff.

Let’s see…

An appendicitis is a painful, uncomfortable and ultimately debilitating condition one which I have suffered with for over a year. However, its remedy (Laproscopic surgery) is fairly tame as far as surgical procedures go - way too much money to an evil hospital, a shitton of painkillers and a week of bedrest

PHPitis is another condition I have been suffering from. It’s not early as painful and has provided me with a decent income and professional growth. It is also not a pussy inflamed organ with no apparent value pressing up against all the nicely formed and functioning organs around it. However, the feeling that there is something not right “down there” remains.
Read the rest of this entry »

I and some colleagues are starting a new consulting firm specializing in Drupal, specifically with a focus on install profiles, Rapid Application Design and Information Architecture. We’re still exploring different opportunities to find our niche in the drupal world, but we’ve already got a couple of contracts starting and need some help.

Specifically, I’m looking for people in the New Delhi area (that’s where I am now based), who have proven experience in the following:

• Application configuration - This means being able to take a messy email from a client, and produce easy to maintain and well documented panels, views and content types. Must have experience with panels 1, should have experience with panels 2.
• Light development - Most of us our heavy coders, so we don’t need a lot of heavy lifting. However, you should be able to at least create blocks, do light theming tasks (not necessarily design), and deubg stuff yourself
• Bonus: Light Linux administration. If you can setup drupal instances / create databases, etc it saves us the trouble of doing it.

College degrees don’t mean anything. Just need a portfolio of work, some references and an hourly rate / # of hours per week available.

Contact me through:
My Contact Form

I was writing a proposal for some new work today, and the task has become quite formulaic. I’ve done it so many times, and I never really liked the standard format of a proposal, but I guess I never had the guts to do something new either.

Here’s how a typical proposal goes (according to me):

1. Cover Letter - SS 25%
2. About the Company - SS 50%
3. Example Clients - SS 25%
4. Staff Profiles and references - SS 75%
5. Development Methodology - SS 100%
6. Project Goals and Objectives - SS 50%
7. Line Item Estimate - SS 10%
8. Timeline - SS 10%
9. Terms - SS 10%

Guide to Proposal Reading

I guess it’s effective and that is why people keep re-hashing it. I try to spend the most space on the parts specific to the client, #1 and #6-8. As someone who has also received a fair amount of proposals, I really couldn’t give a toss who you are until I’ve read those parts. But the formula is to throw the stock about us and way we work in the middle, hoping you’ll impress the client and some buzzword or super client will attract their attention.

Does this work?

What could be the new way to make a proposal with the following goals:

1. Not to be boring!
2. Not to use meaningless language and buzzwords
3. Client gets to see the brass tax quickly and clearly
4. The whole thing gets at least skimmed @ 50%, ideally read in entirety
5. Is not an environmental crime to print
6. Gives client reassurance that you are good at what you do

I’ve been thinking about structuring my proposals in a wiki. So that I literally send the client a link to a wiki page which has the whole proposal in it. The reason this is ideal is that you can use HTML to show only a small portion of “Company profile” (Yawn…), and then link off to more detail and try to be more enticing rather than verbose and confusing.

The other advantage of this approach is that it becomes easier to re-using existing content / organize it, and there are more tools at your disposal (such as animation, ajax, etc - what about an interactive proposal!).

Disadvantage of course is the layout thing, as well as the printable document which is of course 100% necessary, but getting around these technical limitations, it just might work.

Other thoughts? Ideas?

What’s the best proposal you’ve ever read?