My Weight Loss Tamasha - February 2012

During the end of January 2012, I went for a master health check-up at Appolo Hospitals in Chennai and the important advice was to reduce my body weight by 30 kgs in next one year.

Many times in the past, I did make few attempts to reduce my weight - but somehow that didn't last for a long time. But this time, since there were few other problems as well - I have decided to give my best to reduce the body weight.

Hence making an attempt to log my progress here :)

During that check-up my weight was 92 kgs.

Change in food :

• Reduced the amount of rice intake. Earlier I used to (over) eat rice even for dinner. For the last one month normally I take rice only for lunch
• Less friend items than before.
• Non-veg food only once in a week. Earlier I used to take twice.
• No pizzas, burgers this month :)

Physical activities :

• in the morning I walked for about 1 hour (only in the last 10 days)
  
• I take the steps for 11 floors once in the office (last one week)

and after one month, now my weight is about 89 kgs. Though the 3 kg loss is only a small number, I am really excited about it. Now I know, if I put in more efforts the result might be better.

Plans for next month : continue the physical activities without any break and if possible work-out more in the office gym.

Small Product, Single Founder Success Stories !!!

Few days back, in the Hacker's News I found this interesting post : "Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?"

The comment section of that post, had lots and lots of inspiring single founder success stories. So I thought of compiling a list of all those success stories with a brief summary. I hope this helps those searching for something like this :)

If you know about any inspiring stories missing in this list, please do mention them in the comments section.

• Balsamiq - Mockup tool for software.
  This is one of the most inspiring startup stories for single founders. You can read more about its founder Peldi and his story HERE.
  
  
• Bignoggins Productions - sports app for mobile devices.
  With the money from these apps, the founder is currently travelling around the world with his wife. Read more about his travel experience in his blog.
  
  
• Electric Function, Inc. - CMS and web application Frameworks.
  The 23 year old founder says he takes a nice salary and is also doing his PhD.
  
  
• Indefero - Code hosting and Project management.
  They are happily running this business from 2008.
  
  
• scribophile.com and writerfolio.com - online Writers community and portfolio site.
  The founder says, these sites fund his travel across the world, his loans, etc.
  
  
• Sifter - Hosted Issue & Bug tracker.
  Though not a great success, the founder says he is happily running this for about 3+ years.
  
  
• 
  
  
  
  

Search Engine for Indian Classifieds [SW Idea 3]

Problem :
a) There are nearly 100+ classified sites in India, a user has to search separately in each of these sites to find what he needs.
b) Many of these sites, don't remove the old items which also gets listed in the search results
c) Unfortunately, even the Google doesn't give the best results for this kind of search queries.


Solution:
a) A search engine - exclusively for classified sites in India only.
b) Proper categorization of the classified ads and removal of old data at regular intervals
c) Simple and easy to use UI for search.
d) Additional Socializing features - like share with friends, etc.


Existing solution for this requirement:
I did some search - though very little one - and found only one site www.oodle.com doing something similar to this in US. I also found few articles about their controversies with the popular classified site craiglist, which means, more research needs to be done about this idea :)

Samsung Galaxy Ace - User Review

My wife gifted a Samsung Galaxy Ace, for my birthday. Since this is the first smart phone that i am using, I am yet to explore all the features in these phone.

Anyways, here is my feedback about this mobile phone after 10 days of usage - things might change later :-)

• As said earlier, being the first smart phone that I am using, most of the things look wonderful to me - especially the camera, the appearance, the display etc.
• Photos come out very clear. the videos are good and above all I like the Panorama feature in the camera
• Best value for money - with so many apps in the android market place
  

well here are few bad things about this phone

• If you play games / watch a youtube video - the power drains out very quickly - I heard that all touch phones have this problem
• the zooming in touch screen is not that smooth, when the documents/images are very big.
• This is not the phones problem, but the Android's problem - The Keyboard sucks :-(
  
  
  

My Online Income Report!!!

Today, after reading KreCi's blog post about his February 2011 Income Report, I thought even I should post about my online income i,e. from this Weblog. I setup my Google Adsense account somewhere around April 2006 and then got my first cheque from the Google Team in July 2008.

It took almost 2+ years to make that first 100$ (averaging about 4$ per month at that time) - but the income started decreasing after that. It is almost 3 years, after that first payment and it is yet to reach the next 100$ mark - currently it is averaging only about 1.5 - 2 US$ a month. (Recession!!!)

Total revenue for February 2011 was US$ 1.61 only!!!!!

Well, considering the amount of time I put for this blog and the quality of contents here - this is not at all a bad number :-)