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Hall.com Raises $580k in Seed Funding for a Collaborative Knowledge Platform

by on October 18, 2011 in Startups

Hall.com, a real time collaborative knowledge platform, just announced $580k in seed funding from Founder’s Collective, and Pivot North, amid others.

Hall.com – which has a killer domain name, by the way (just one of the things that can push you past the competition in the inbox) – wants to undertake something ambitious: create a platform that inspires real time sharing of knowledge and collaboration on a particular topic. It’s akin to a virtual assembly hall where a group of people can gather together and share ideas. Sounds good so far.

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Codecademy.com is Manna for Programming Dunces

by on October 17, 2011 in Startups

As I’ve asserted in the about page, I’m as good with programming as a giraffe is with opposable thumbs. It’s not for a lack of trying; there are at least half a dozen books on ‘Getting Started with PHP!’, or ‘Learn Java. Fast!’ on my bookshelf. Somehow, their authors’ enthusiasm rarely mirrors mine.

Part of the problem is the interface: reading the book, typing on the computer, reading the book, typing on the computer, reading the book…this gets old very soon. Add to it the frustration a non-technical person feels with programming, and you can see why so few manage to actually learn coding outside of classrooms (and nerd circles).

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ApartmentADDA Brings Professional Apartment Management Software to India

by on October 15, 2011 in Startups

Here’s a (an Indian) problem: as a young and tech-savvy population ditches the ideas of home ownership of its parents’ generation and moves, en masse, into apartment complexes, it realizes, much to its dismay, the disconnect between the high tech world it inhabits, and the old, slow ways of apartment members’ association.

Apartment living is a rather new concept in India that, until a decade ago, was scarcely embraced by anyone outside of the big, crowded urban centers – New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore. For my parents’ generation, ‘house’ meant a small, cozy, single story building constructed with much care and deliberation in an affordable but respectable part of the city after a lifetime of hard work. You lived in apartments out of reasons of necessity, not choice.

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BioCurious is On a Mission to Make Biology Fun

by on October 15, 2011 in Startups

Back in high school, I picked an odd set of subjects (yes, we are required to do that here in India): biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. This was odd because it was the hardest choice available, particularly because I chose biology even though I had no plans to ever enter the medical field. When a friend popped the inevitable “why the f**k?”, my answer was something along the lines of, well, you’ve at least got to learn what’s happening in your own body.

That I ended up studying English in college is another matter altogether. Point is: you’ve at least got to know what’s happening in your own body. While I won’t claim to know much, I can at least attest that I don’t bumble around like an idiot every time I see a doctor. The lessons of those two years of biology will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I’m thankful for that.

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GoShared.com is Asset Sharing for Private Groups

by on October 15, 2011 in Startups

goshared-big-header

The success of AirBnb, and the overwhelmingly positive response to the car sharing service, GetAround, have prompted a certain rethink on the idea of private ownership. If it is used by strangers – who pay for it, by the way – does it remain ‘private’ anymore, or does its ownership transfer to the community at large? I’m not talking of the legal aspects, of course, but the metaphorical idea of ownership – if many use it, does it still remain ‘your space’?

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Paul Carr’s New Startup, and Why I’m Cheering

by on October 15, 2011 in Opinion, Startups

As a medium, the internet represents the lowest strata of content, a veritable cesspool littered with spammy, misspelled, grammatically incorrect writing. If it is not being hammered into the nightmares of English majors worldwide (that would, by the way, include yours truly) by internet ‘marketers’, spun into often hilarious psychobabble, or plagiarized by unscrupulous publications, it is being organized into inane lists or splattered across dubious websites with formulaic, page-view enhancing websites (“100 Coolest People in Tech! Yay!”).

So when one of the strongest voices in tech journalism – former TechCruncher Paul Carr – announces a new startup, The New Gambit, that promises to be a funnier version of The Economist, I can’t help but cheer on from the sidelines.

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“Idle Worship” Might Just Make Social Gaming Cool Again

by on October 14, 2011 in Startups

Remember when Mafia Wars first came out? Everyone and his grandpa was hooked on to it – the very first success story from Zynga back when social gaming on Facebook was still cool. That was, of course, before FarmVille, CityVille, and a plethora of other spammy (ahem, ‘viral’), derivative, uninspired crap flooded Facebook and utterly desecrated the very notion of ‘social games’. Serious game companies regard Zynga with derision, even as they envy its success. Serious gamers, on the other hand, regard ‘social gamers’ with utter contempt.

I tried my hand at CityVille a few months back and I was not impressed. What was particularly annoying was the mind-numbingly repetitive ‘farming’ (click-collect, click-collect) and Zynga’s aggressive attempts to get me to pay for ‘coins’. I quit soon after; it couldn’t hold my interest for more than 3 days.

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OnePager.com Raises $350k in Funding. Here’s the Low-Down

by on October 14, 2011 in Startups

Small businesses have a problem: they want to get online, but have no frickkin’ idea how to do so.

For us – the people who follow technology obsessively – it can be a bit difficult to gauge the sheer magnitude of this problem. I’ve often said that the tech world lives in its own bubble. That the business world at large still hasn’t wrapped its head around the internet is only an indicator of this.

Building a web presence is the first part of the problem, particularly for small business owners. It is particularly troubling because these businesses realize that their target audience increasingly consists of people who grew up with the internet and consider it to be a ‘default’ medium. Reaching out to this massive customer base is crucial for their survival.

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