Life is Beautiful

Today I started my work early (6:30 AM) since I had to prepare for two important meetings scheduled for the afternoon. I had no clue what news was awaited for me then . I was in a very enthusiastic mood for some unknown reason. At 7:30 AM I got to know that at 2AM a fire broke out in my office due to an electric short circuit. For a moment I couldn’t believe it when my mother told me that everything in my office was destroyed. Nothing was left. For an entrepreneur it felt almost like someone killed your baby.

I drove to work alone to see the situation. All kind of thoughts were coming to my mind. I was trying hard to think positive, trying to understand why it happened. I was composed till I reached my work place. The moment I reached there I saw
Continue…………

When I read the book ‘The monk who sold his ferrari’, somewhere I wished that I too get a chance to go on such a spiritual journey. Last year I came to know about Vipassana . Vipassana is a 10 days residential course where they teach you meditation and other techniques to help you know yourself better. Its completely free of cost. I personally believe in meditation a lot and think our mind has infinite power if we can tame it. Like many other people I also thought that going for a 10-day course where you are completely disconnected from the outside world (i.e. no access to cell phone/internet) is next to impossible but deep down I wanted to go for it. 15 days back I was thinking of going for some 4-day meditation course but then a friend of mine insisted that I should go for Vipassana. He assured me 100% satisfaction from Vipassana. Once again that desire to go for Vipassana became stronger and I started researching about Vipassana online. I read almost all the stuff available online related to Vipassana. I read about experiences of different people from different parts of the world and found one common feedback ” ITS WORTH IT” . 90% of the people who went for the course simple loved it and thought it was one of the most wonderful experiences of their life. Its supposed to be very tough. You have to maintain noble silence for 10 days. You cant even look at each other. They want you to be completely with yourself. Initially it sounds like an insane thing to do but you won’t hold the same view after you are done with the course.

So I had made up my mind that I will go for Vipassana. For some reason I was excited
Continue…………

Yesterday read the following beautiful poem

“To every man there openeth
A way, and ways, and a way.
And the high soul climbs the high way,
And the low soul gropes the low:
And in between, on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth
A high way and a low,
And every man decideth The
way his soul shall go.”
—JOHN OXENHAM.

Isnt is so true ? Every day is a day of decision. We are constantly at crossroads, in our
business dealings, our social relations, in our homes; there is always the necessity of a choice. In this ever-changing material age, with seemingly complex forces all about us, we sometimes cry out that we are driven by force of circumstances. Yet the fact remains that
Continue…………

Have you ever heard of this ?

” If you think you can , you are right.
If you think you can’t , you are right ” — Henry Ford

Isn’t capacity/capability is just state of mind ? Let me try to explain this through some real life examples.

My brother’s friend wanted to start his own business but he used to think that he is not capable of doing it all by himself. He would always tell himself that he is too young to start his own business and his mind would show him all the possible reasons why he cant do it. His mind showed him all the problems like lack of knowledge, financial constraints, infrastructure and above all the fear of failure. Since business wasn’t an option for him ( as he used to think) , he joined a multinational IT company in Bangalore. It was then he realized that it wasn’t something he wanted to do. He talked to my brother and me about it. We just told him one thing “if you really want to start your own business , just tell yourself that you ‘CAN’ do it and feel that you ‘CAN’ do it” . It was no less than a surprise to him that his mind started showing him all the possible ways of doing his own business. His dad decided to help him with finances. His cousin decided to help him with technical stuff and his mind freed him from the fear of failure . His “I CAN” played all the magic.

*********

One female who was working in a multinational company got married and had kids. She wanted to work again but she used to tell herself that she CAN’T work and her mind would show her all the possible reasons
Continue…………

A man feared his wife wasn’t hearing as well as she used to and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her, he called the family Doctor to discuss the problem. The Doctor told him there is a simple informal test the husband could perform to give the Doctor a better idea about her hearing loss.

Here’s what you do,” said the Doctor, “stand about 40 feet away from her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone see if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and s o on until you get a response.

“That evening, the wife is in her bedroom and he was in the den. He says to himself, “I’m about 40 feet away, let’s see what happens.” then in a romantic tone he asks, ‘Honey, do you wana make love tonight?” No response. So the husband moves to closer to the room, about 30 feet from his wife and
Continue…………

You must have seen this warning on many sites that you shouldn’t select “remember password” on a shared computer. Do you know exactly why they ask you to do that ?  I would like to talk about one good reason why you should not be doing that.

Lets see how its dangerous in firefox when you select “Remember password” for any site.

When you click on “Remember” in the above image, anybody can see your username and password(in clear text) on your computer. If you want to confirm it , try this in Firefox . Click on tools->options . Select the “Security” tab and then click on “Show Password”
Continue…………

Yesterday I was looking at the traffic on www.shwetagupta.com and found that lot of people from myspace and other domains are referring to images hosted on my server and hence eating up my bandwidth. I was getting 40% of the requests(for images) from myspace domain. Yes! they have a huge traffic. If one has to use the images then they should download them and host them on their server instead of hotlinking to someone else site. “Hotlinking” or “Bandwidth theft” is direct linking to a web site’s files (images, video, etc.). An example would be using an <img> tag to display an image you found on someone else’s web page so it will appear on your own site, weblog, forum message post, etc. Usually personal sites don’t have that much of bandwidth to allow hotlinking of images. Also I observed that lot of people these days not only copy the content from your site but also the the images (still being served from your server i.e. leeching your bandwidth)

You can do two things to discourage hotlinking of content on your site

I Making changes in .htaccess file

Suppose all your images are in images folders ( mine are in http://www.shwetagupta.com/blog/images) then create .htaccess file in that folder with following content so that request for any image on shwetagupta.com (on any domain other than shwetagupta.com) will cause it to display a substitute image (stolen.jpg) i.e

Continue…………

I have at times loved to be in invisible mode on Yahoo messenger and chat with people as per my convenience. Last week I was in invisible mode at 7 am in the morning and one window popped up ” Hey Shweta, how are you” . I asked that friend of mine “How do you always know when I am online ? ” . She replied ” xeeber. Its xeeber.com ” .

I checked out the site and wow you just need to type the user id of the person and xeeber.com tells you the status
Continue…………

Here is my journey so far in my own words.

Are Indian entrepreneurs shy about involving advisors?

I came across the following article which tries to explain why Indian entrepreneurs don't involve advisors compare to the entrepreneurs from other countries. However with time, entrepreneurs are becoming more willing to involve mentors and advisors. I personally believe it really helps having advisors on your board.

read more

 Networking is an essential skill for most business people, and especially for entrepreneurs. Here comes BarCampDelhi for the third time to give you an opportunity to network with like-minded folks. Its a great way for open learning and sharing.

Here are the event details

Date : December 8th , 2007

Time : 9:30 am - 5:30 pm

Venue : Impetus Technologies ,D-39/40, Sector - 59, NOIDA

read more

Well to start with, I know I am not successful yet but still writing this post :) . I have been reading lot of books and blogs about successful/unsuccessful people and companies. Two things that are common among all the successful people are

read more

Entrepreneurship might seem like a cool thing to do. You will find people arround you praising you for having the courage to start it. End of it might not be that cool.Its all good in the beginning but as the time passes by you will see more pressure building up. Pressure to perform, pressure to do well, pressure to succeed. With time you might realize that more inputs/resources are going into the venture without the proportionate returns. Your bank balance might reach its all-time-low value. Always remember "Entrepreneurship is a marathon and not a sprint" . All the companies which became great took a while to get to that stage.

read more

Corporate Lesson 1:
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her
shower when the doorbell rings. After a few seconds of arguing over
which one should go and answer the doorbell, the wife gives up,
quickly wraps herself up in a towel and runs downstairs.

read more

Though I personally believe that as such there are no rules in life but here are few interesting rules  to make more money, rock your career and revel in your individuality

Rule 1: Everything’s an Illusion, So Pick One That’s Empowering
Pulling a Company Out of Thin Air and Making a Few Million

Rule 2: An MBA is Optional, A GSD is Essential
Kissing the Blarney Stone and Then Some Butt

Rule 3: Problems + Pain = Profit
Only Painful Problems Open Wallets

read more

" There are no free lunches "
If you know what are getting into then it becomes easier to face the situation. When you are getting into entrepreneurship then should know the following

read more