After much contemplation, we have finally moved our blog from blogger to WordPress hosted on our own servers. The old blogger template was not really happening and we wanted a better looking blog with more white space, nice widgets and more flexibility in managing the posts.
WordPress we felt was the best one out there with elegant and easily customizable themes. Much to our surprise It took us just a little over a day to migrate and customize the theme to our liking.
We have used the Modio theme developed by Upstart blogger.
Do update your RSS readers to get latest updates from our blog.
Hope you like the change!
Rewind to our posting on 22nd July…
It turned out that our excitement was not in vain…we came to know about some fascinating technologies while making this report (life can’t get better than this…we get to know new things in the field that we love and we get paid for it)
Since our last post about this project was highly secretive, you probably couldn’t get any idea what the basic business idea is…
So here is a little secret…
It is a digital movies portal…
And you’ll ask how is it different from bigflix.com or something similar? Well…ask our client about that…we’ll definitely get sued if we speak anymore 
We provided a comprehensive report on technology & infrastructure needed, market analysis, , vendor analysis and cost of technology and IT implementation of the project. Check out the index of the report attached with this post.
There’s more good news from our block!!
From our blog dated 27th June, you may recollect that we had submitted business plans for the Tie-ISB Connect competition. Well…Swingwind Technologies’ Pareeksha has been chosen as one of the business plans for the final round of presentations to VCs in November, at ISB. And we are mighty kicked about it!! Our belief in the potential of this product has just swelled up…
We’re happier about the fact that this gives us another reason to party…hopefully at Swingwind’s expense this time.
The 1st ever Drupal Camp in India was organized at DAIICT, Gandhinagar from 8-9th August ’08. A week before the Drupal Camp there were bomb blasts in Surat and the whole state continued to be in high alert. This still didn’t dampen the spirits of the Drupallers and the camp did attract good number of companies and students from across India. I was really looking forward for this camp as was excited at the prospect of meeting fellow Drupallers. I met some really cool people who have varied experience right from coding to the business aspects of Drupal. I was really impressed by couple of presentations, one from Mr.Roshan Shah from Gloscon who has loads of experience handling Drupal based projects and other from Dipen who I guess has nose dived completely into Drupal code.
After attending the event and speaking to students and the resident Drupallers, I felt that there is lot of enthusiasm around Drupal, but the Drupal community is really scattered in India. We need to have more of such events frequently to connect and share knowledge with other Drupallers. I guess the best way to get started is to have small Drupal time slots in the general Open source events and bar camps to bring this community together and then have dedicated Drupal events frequently.
We enjoy being a part of Web2.0!!
It gives us a feeling of familiarity because of what we know about it, and also a sense of mystery with its many caves and pyramids that we still need to explore and learn about.
It is this mystery that has led to 84ideas taking up a project on technology research for a soon to be set up online portal by a dynamic young entrepreneur. Spare us for not disclosing any details of the business idea he is working on…our confidentiality agreement warns us that if we disclose any details, we will not only be sued, but will also have our internet connection disconnected for a whole month (I don’t know which of the two is worse…I think getting sued is worse, but others in my team think otherwise).
So…after coming tremendously close to getting sued…I’ll quickly tell u what we are doing for him. Based on his business model, we will be researching what technology will be best for setting up and maintaining his portal. There are also some technology requirements concerned with the basic nature of his business, which we will be assisting him with. It’s a good idea and we are really excited about working on this project !
There were no bugles…no sweets distributed to the crowd…no crowd…no carpet of flower petals…
Yes…our website was launched with much pomp and fanfare!!
www.84ideas.com is now our new address on the web.
The site was designed by IndiGenius (www.indigenius.com) and integrated with the open source content management system Drupal (www.drupal.org).
As if to celebrate the launch, our website launch coincided with our decision to expand our service offerings. We now offer Web 2.0 applications development services as well. At present, these services are extended towards use of Drupal Content Management System and Ruby on Rails (www.rubyonrails.org) (Ruby based web application development framework). We’re also offering Facebook and Orkut application development services now, for those looking at making optimum use of the social media as part of their marketing strategy.
Right then…update provided…work done…its time for some chow.
Happy eating to us!!
Folks!
June…lots of things happened…we submitted some business ideas for the Tie-ISB Connect competition…got our website in place…came in contact with many more prospective clients…had new team members joining…and we celebrated
Most of our time this month was spent on working on two separate business concepts for the TiE-ISB Connect competition scheduled to be held in November’08. TiE-ISB Connect is an annual competition held at ISB, which aims at bringing entrepreneurs with great business ideas/startups and investors together to help create a mutually beneficial relationship between the entrepreneurs and the investors. In simple words…there are some great business ideas that need funding, and this is one place where we can get funds.
The first step was to submit executive summaries of our ideas, giving an explanation of the product/service that will be offered, the market, competition, etc. This being done, the next step will be to submit a detailed business plan if our idea get selected.
We’ve submitted executive summaries of business plans for two different business ideas: one for Pareeksha by Swingwind Technologies (an 84ideas client) and another for an 84ideas baby called V-Street.
Our blog post on 22nd May will give you an idea what Pareeksha is about. We are convinced that this tool has huge potential to reach out to people around the globe. Thus, we are in the process of developing a detailed business plan for Pareeksha, the executive summary of which has already been submitted for the TiE-ISB event.
V-street…an 84ideas idea is another initiative we are really excited about (after all, new ideas do keep exciting us). V-street, a virtual shopping street, is an e-commerce idea based on the concept of virtual real estate. Retailers can set up their stores on this street and consumers can walk through this street, visit and browse through shops of their choice, talk to salesmen and make informed purchases. All this without compromising on the essential benefits of e-commerce! We’re thus looking at creating a whole new shopping experience for online shoppers…quite different from traditional e-commerce so far.
While we have done all the ‘inauspicious’ things like cut our finger nails after sunset, walked under a ladder, crossed the path of a black cat, and what not…we are still hopeful that our ideas should get through the first round of scrutiny.
And yeah…not to forget…we celebrated the completion of the executive summaries with a dinner at Aroma. Below are some pictures from the celebration dinner.
So here is the news…we are now working with Swingwind Technologies on their Tests authoring and delivery software called as “Pareeksha” . I can tell you that Swingwind is one most promising startups we have seen until now..they have a very good development team and an amazing product developed on Flex platform (flash based).
The product has all the makings of scalable and extensible test authoring and delivery platform. Since its flash based, the interface looks really good…I like the vista theme they got in one of their demos. Its also takes more time to load, but once it loads its really fast. One of the good features about this product is that that, if there is some power outage or a network problem while taking the test, the state of the test is saved on the users local machine and so whenever the user goes back online, the test can be continued from where it got disconnected.
Another very good feature is the guess functionality, where the user can mark the question if he/she is guessing the question and at the end of the test can review the performance in the guessed questions.
Pareeksha also has a feature wherein the users are enforced to take the test in full screen mode. This is for preventing users from accessing any other site on the same computer.
The tests can be delivered online as well as offline in CDs.
Pareeksha is targeted at Training and educational institutions. It can be customized and used for all competitive exams like IIT JEE, EAMCET etc and also for Computer adaptive tests (CAT) like GMAT , GRE.
Swingwind.com is one of the live instances of Pareeksha, the site has lot of quality placement papers for various companies. Check them out if you are planning to write any of the placement exams.
(Updated on 29th July’08)
Ok Stop! Please…too many questions at one go…I’m getting a little stressed out…lets take this one by one…
First…what is 84ideas about? Well… all of us here at 84ideas love working with crazy ideas…love internet…love technology…and we try keeping track of all the latest happenings on the internet…social media….personalization, social applications, community building….try and test them out…and somewhere down the line, aim to make some money out of these as well
So this is where we have come up with our first service offering….
1. Web 2.0 consulting, strategy and development
Like I said…at 84ideas, we love the internet and technology…so we thought…why not make this one of the mainstays of our business! Hence the decision to offer Web 2.0 services.
One of my friends asked me ‘what on earth is Web 2.0 and how will you adapt it a business?’
Simply put…we will help you create your business’s presence on the internet. Whether your business is internet based (e-commerce) or offline, we will help you leverage the power of the internet to increase your sales. So whatever your company sells, we will come up with some useful (and possibly crazy) ideas on how you can use the internet to increase its sales…be it creating an interactive website or an informative blog or a fun Facebook application or absolutely anything else on the internet that’ll translate into more sales for your business.
Once we figured out that Web 2.0 is something we’re very fond of, we also realized that we have a keen interest in business. So…then we thought…why not combine our love for the internet and business? Thus was born our second service offering…
2. Business consulting services for technology startups
You have a great technology idea/product/service, but don’t know how to build a business around it? You know it is something that the world needs, but don’t know how to get it to the world and make money out of it? Or…you understand business completely but are clueless about technology that’s best suited to your business?
Familiar situation faced by people we know…and thus this service offering.
Once you’ve conceived a great technology idea/product, and want to make it into a full fledged business, we will help you create systems for marketing, people, etc., that are best suited to your business idea. Basically, you concentrate on your tech product/service offering and we will focus on all the business elements around it.
It may also happen that you have a complete grip over the business idea and most of the business systems needed to support it…but when it comes to using the right technology for your business, you are staring at a wall with question marks all over. Please allow us to break down this wall for you!
Rest assured that this is just the start of our journey. We’re constantly thinking of new business ideas that’ll click and make 84ideas more exciting.
Do let us know what you think about our service offerings and where we can be of help to you! We promise not to bankrupt you 
P.S – that’s of one of our ‘committed’ team members…deep in thought…’generating ideas’ for making our first million…
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VKelmyP8WO0/SI8gL1zF1lI/AAAAAAAAAAs/Z8bE4xtHLbk/s1600-h/deep+thought.JPG)
Greetings!
Thanks for stopping by.
84ideas is now a reality and we are damn kicked about it
Probably the first question in your mind now is “Why 84?”
Let me first answer this by answering why we chose to have a number in the first place…
1. First of all it makes the name a lot easier to remember
2. We felt a number would be a good idea for building brand consistency across our products and services
3. Domain name availability; whichever other name we came up with was already taken!
4. Oh yea…we did get inspired by some of the bigger brands….37signals, network18…hope we don’t get sued by them for getting inspired by them 
Why 84? Why not more ideas? Don’t we love ideas?
1. Its not something based on numerology.
2. Yes… a li’l bit inspired by our birth year.
3. I like the number 4 and my partner likes the number 8
4. We just had that number hanging in our brains somehow…:)
Here is a very interesting blog post by Dharmesh Shah where he gives some good pointers for naming a startup …
http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/223/The-Startup-Name-Game.aspx
Another interesting article by Guy kawasaki gives us some insights on do’s dont’s while naming a startup. You can read it here http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/the_name_game.html
Keep watching this space for updates…