Tag Archive for 'raj-doshi'

Meet Your New App: HanMeta

Published
by
Josh Kim
on June 24, 2007
in Project Ideas, Web Applications and Web Development
. Comments

I woke up today, fixated on picking a name. I had racked my brain trying to figure out clever metaphors in nature (everything from tree trunks to rivers to pollinating flowers)… clever mashing of two words… sticking “han” in front of everything, trying to go with the naming scheme I’ve devised a couple of years back. (No, I’m not going back to slapping “jk” in front of everything)

There was a domain name I had before this one that would fit in perfectly with what the application will do. But sadly, I gave it up and now it’s in the hands of some spammers.

Regardless, let it be known:

HanMeta.com: the social web 2.0 blah rounded corners blah starburst blah tags blah rss feed reader. Now with more Rails! Ugh.

Let’s see how far I can take this with a ragtag team of awesome coding ninjas, present company included. Looks like, at the beginning, it’ll be Derek Remund, Amir Manji (This guy needs a blog!), and me. I must call upon the help of the sweet coding ninjas of Alex Argo, Dan Janosik, and, of course, the venerable Raj “Taco HTML Edit” Doshi.

All I’ve got is a running list of great features I’d like to implement, and lots of time to do it. (Oh, please please please let me have less time to work on this, if you catch my drift, potential employers?) I’ll try to chronicle this crazy journey. Like… startup.com or the DVD that fogcreek put out. Just in text form.

I just hope it’s more like the latter than the former.

07.07.07: Here we come!

More details as I get time to write them down.

Google v. Yahoo

Published
by
Josh Kim
on April 19, 2007
in Investing & Finances and Web Applications
. Comments

Question of the Week: Buy Google or Yahoo?

I haven’t really thought about Yahoo as much as I’ve had in the past couple of days.

Google and Yahoo… to normal people, they might just seem like #1 and #2 in the world of online search (there’s a #3? who’s that? ahem). But really, I see that comparing the two companies as a whole is almost like comparing apples to oranges. The commonality that people misunderstand is “search”. But man, there’s so much more!

Both companies are trying to grow. Aggressively. Mind you, Google will be going after Microsoft Office’s market (PowerPoint, anyone?), no matter what Mr. Schmidt is saying at the Web 2.0 Expo (seriously, I only typed “2.0″ cuz it’s name of the conference).

“I don’t think we compete with them. We’re not as fully functional as MS Office — we’re more in line with how people use the web than how they use the desktop.”

I’m not sure how I’ll be using this presentation feature, seeing how I don’t normally create PowerPoints on a day to day basis… but I use Google all the time. The default search engine I use in Firefox is still Google (see how I didn’t say “I google all the time”? Dodged a bullet on that one). I use Gmail for all my email needs. I use Google Reader for my feeds. I also use Google docs, for budgeting and reporting hours for work. I even use Google chat from time to time.

But really, this is only because I haven’t had a reason to try something new. The funny thing is… Yahoo has already been a part of my world… for quite a while, now. While I haven’t really ever used Yahoo search (except to settle a little spat between two friends, Alex and Raj… pertaining to who is really “L Dopa Da Dopsta”..), Yahoo has Del.icio.us and Flickr… two companies very dear to my entrepreneurial heart.

Sadly… Yahoo took a beating on the markets today. Thank goodness I haven’t bought any of their stock. Yet…

What was the point of that? I don’t know. I just needed to relieve some Google/Yahoo steam.

I think this post borders on brain dump… Meh.

Oh What Fun!

Published
by
Josh Kim
on January 28, 2007
in Personal
. Comments

This is definitely not the post I wanted to make. I’m still writing a post on why home doesn’t feel like home anymore… but I was sidetracked with one heck of a fun night with the Nerds here in Cincinnati. Nerdworld 2007, as Argo so affectionately called it. And man… it was definitely a world of nerds (But I don’t think we should start calling it that… that’s kinda… nerdy… oh… wow… supressing… recursive… joke…). There was the obligatory video gaming (brought to you by the Wii), then some Mega Monopoly (yeap, I lost… and I’m going to say it again: I had no chance of winning when I started). But this time, things were a little different. We had a full blown discussion on technology and start-ups for a couple of hours. I’d say about 2 and a half hours or so on subjects from YouTube clips to DirectX 10 (which I was happily not a part of) to career choices. I think this might be the record time spent on talking about some serious topics. Alas, in the end, the entire thing just broke down to watching clips of SNL Digital Shorts and listening to Weird Al. Wow… okay, next paragraph.

I’m not sure why I didn’t see this before, but everyone, except me, are graduates of Miami; one with a Masters in CS, and the other three with BS’s in CS. I wonder how things would have turned out if I didn’t step out of state to go to UIUC and if I stuck with CS. I’m much to tired to even start thinking about the possibilities…

In all seriousness, though, I’m beginning to believe that there are even more people in my group of friends that would want to join me in my quest to shape the world. I guess I don’t really have to venture out too far to find the right “team”.

Lots to think and pray about. Hmm…

And yes. I’m trying to keep that daily post promise. It really freaking is 4:10 AM… oh geez. I swear… I made some horrible spelling and grammatical mistakes the first time through this post.