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When i read looked through how rasta.pk solved the issue of finding out traffic congestions immediately in my mind I remembered the saying “focus on the solution instead of focusing on the problem”.

The problem was to identify sources of traffic congestions, providing blocked road info to any medium to road users, solution

“Get the traffic police personal deputed at signals to report congestions through sms” 

Rasta is result of a public private partner ship between UTNT (I guess the Screens we see around the city belong to them) and  City Traffic Police Lahore, the budgeting for this comes out of the CSR Budget of UTNT (Now this is an effective utilization of CSR Budget).

Currently I guess they are dispersing the information through FM Channel tuned to frequency 88.8 and on their website how ever in plans are updates to provide information through SMS, and provide live feeds to the traffic camera through mms and their website. They are also providing info and updates on flight and train schedule over FM.

Here is a snapshot of what you can find on the site. Good execution, if they can deliver on promise, i guess we are looking at a comprehensive road monitoring solution, will be helpful specially when out VIPs decide to drive through the city stopping every one else dead in their tracks.

I just returned from an online marketing workshop arranged by P@SHA and Google here in Lahore. A similar session was conducted earlier in Karachi and one is due in Islamabad. Badar Khushnood was the speaker and I don’t remember where those 3 hours went when it all started. The focus of the workshop was obviously on the online marketing and both paid and free methods of promoting a product online were discussed.

The environment was set great right from the beginning like most of the other P@SHA events and there were more than a hundred participants including members of tech and non tech industries, agencies and marketing guys and some students as well. Live blogging by Fariha was adding to the whole feel of the session.

Though Badar’s first presentation-slide was titled “Marketing your software online”, the workshop was definitely about selling anything and everything online. A few success stories were also shared where services from non-tech industry are being promoted through Google’s several online marketing tools that work together to make the difference.

Badar started with creating a case that pull marketing is better than the push message and the number of people using Internet, mobiles and PCs is getting higher and higher, so marketing efforts should be diverted to online marketing now instead of the conventional mechanisms. Then he discussed different tools one by one that you use for online market research, setting the goal, identifying keywords, timing, naming, wording and then some website content tools as well. These tools include Google Insight, Adwords and its keywords tool, Site-maps, Google Search itself and last but not least Google Analytics.

If you missed this session and still want to attend? After Lahore and Karachi, now the same workshop will be conducted in Islamabad by P@SHA.

Innovation a program aired on SAMAA TV which covers innovation across Pakistan has been awarded brand of the year award for 2009 in a category recognizing products and services that sharpen public focus on processes of innovation and competitiveness in Pakistan. The series beat out more than 500 competitors from various industries in a nationwide judging that included a consumer survey and an expert panel analysis.

Innovation is a result of collaboration between  Vinnova Stanford Research Center of  Innovation Journalism and SAMAA TV.

As mentioned by report on Stanford news channel here ‘Innovation’ is a brain child of SAMMA CEO Mr Amir Jehangir who also sits on the advisory board of Innovation Journalism Center.

It is very heartening to see that in today’s mayhem of political and talk shows Amir Jehangir tried to bring out some thing positive for our society and provide hope, and  was rightfully rewarded.

Congratulations to all of the team behind the idea and its execution.

Following is the introductry video of the program

you can find more details on this here and here

Hi I have worked on few things for making it easy for our users to track and read us across multiple social platforms.

I will list those things down and would like your feedback on this be candid in your opinion.

First some basic details

Our Twitter Account is greenwhite you can follow us on twitter and each blog post appears on twitter and your reply to it appears in the main blog as comments (This feature is currently in beta so bear with me while I iron out the issues)

Our facebook account is Green N. White and you can request your account to be added if you are not in the friends list, it was in active for some time but with these new tools syncing things back and forth it should work.

Facebook page for greenwhite is Green & White you can become a Fan and all updates will also be posted here, maybe some time in near future we will have only have this page for our facebook account and slowly remove the profile, but for now both are running.

There now also a small facebook app, which will allow you to read complete posts without leaving the boundaries of your facebook but will also enable you to comment from with in facebook and read the responses, the comments will be added to main blog and users coming in directly will also see those. link for adding the app is

http://apps.facebook.com/green-n-white/

You can also notice a new widget on the right side of the page which invites you to connect to face book, doing so will allow you to invite your friends and share the blog posts with them.

Also in comment system you can comment using the original method or if you like can also publish the comment you make here to your facebook profile so what ever insight you provide will appear in your feed, some thing which i guess will help in more engaged discussions.

And you have the option of sharing the posts through all available mediums like email, facebook, twitter etc visible at the end of each post so you can share posts over what ever medium you like, currently the twitter share is not shortening the urls but i will work to have it there soon.

So do let me know your feedback and follow us where you want to

I am not a regular reader, I used to be but recently my span of attention and time constraints does not allow me the luxury and pleasure of going through a book in one sitting.

However my recent trip and the long 14 hour Emirates Flight plus the fact that Imran Zia had gifted me a free copy of Reboot allowed me a chance to read it.

If you are in any way been interested in startup scene in local IT and Tech Industry you must have come across Jawwad Farid. His blog http://blog.alchemya.com/ has been my first web page daily for some years now. His company Alchemya more than a successful venture is a place that teaches you how you can grow a family instead of a company. He is one of those person that if you convince him that you are in for the long run he will make sure you succeed some time at the cost of his own time and credibility, there are few like him and we do need more.

There are three types of people I come across, those who have been in job for long amounts of time and want to startup on their own but have not taken te plunge due to fear of failure, those who have taken the plunge and are in their initial days (read very initial days) of defining them selves struggling to make the payroll and operational costs and ones who have survived the initial months and now look around for new risks to take.

This book caters to all three categories, the best thing about it is that its not a narration or fiction, Jawwad has laid across all original emails and how his venture unfolded and then crashed what are the reasons. If you belong to any of the categories listed before you some how feel that he is telling your story and that is what’s so good about it, its not his story its yours you relate to the chapters and within a couple of chapters into reading you start visualizing your story analyzing your mistakes or good decisions and bye the time you reach the end you really have gone through a roller coaster ride of discovering your self and your life in a completely third person perspective.

It doesn’t give you a formula for success but it does takes you through the scary road of what if I fail, and will it be as bad as it seems or will it be ok, what you risk to lose and what are the things that you can never lose even if you try. How soon can you identify if your idea is working or you are delaying the failure, a lot of these questions are answered not be a yes no formulae but a a story which is weaved by him and his experience and you just learn from it.

So if you have a startup plan on having one or just aspire to be one some day do read the book you will love it.

The space of online shops is becoming some what crowded. Though it’s still open but if you map it to number of people who have internet access and even from them identify the ones who will ever buy a thing online its a pretty slim audience that these online retailers are fighting for.

Seems the site is backed or is another venture from the people who are behind Mustakbil which is a job site. They are starting initially with Laptops. digital cameras and multimedia projectors. Technically speaking there is no major innovation and i believe there can not be a lot of changes from one online retailer to other, the only things which can be a diffrentiating factor would be the payment and delivery modules, because in our country where few people with credit cards and fewer still comfortable with online credit card transaction, and most of all the absence of any merchant services in Pakistan the only innovation they can provide is through the payment and delivery services.

Beliscity and Shophive have been creative in shipment and charges by offering payment on delivery in Karachi and Lahore respectively, there is no such thing being offered by etail and the only way you can pay is by check or bank transfer which in my opinion would not induce a lot of confidence in buyers.

I am still surprised that with easypaisa, UBL Orion and Mobilink Genie services available we still are relaying on bank transfers. Probably there are still issues with access to these services for Merchants, i guess some of our readers can shed some light on this.

For etail I would still say they leave a lot to be desired from inventory point of view and payment and shipping, being based in Islamabad and the fact that the other two competitors don’t have a delivery in that area they could have started with such a service for the Twin Cities at the least.

During my recent trip to the USA, I discovered about this brilliant product that is now found in almost all desi home.

First a Disclaimer, before all of you go and start bashing me for promoting un ethical products which do not respect copy right, let me clearly state that i am in no way promoting or supporting copyright infringements. My focus would be just to see how some one saw an opportunity of making money and executed it to perfection.

JadooTV is basically a simple box which connects to internet and from there it stream all popular desi channels over to your TV this is how the box looks like

Price that they are charging for this small box is 199 USD for a standard box and 249 USD for a high definition box. These prices are extremely steep by any US Standard, just to put in perspective you can get a Bluray DVD player for less in US.

They don’t do any main stream advertisement but still every desi I met either had it in his house of was fully aware of its existence, out of all my friends and relative nearly 90% already had it in their homes while the other just waiting to have it.

This in any terms is a huge success, how did it do it and why are people going for such a device is simple, local channels are extremely expensive, JEO costs about 24 USD per month, and that is one channel, combine it with ever popular Star TV and sports channel and your cable bill easily goes north of 50$ a month.

So the calculation a person does is even if this service stops in 4~5 months i have fully recovered my money, they are aware that it will go away some time still they are agreeing to put in such a money. These guys have a very good supply chain with distributers spread near all desi populations and direct shipping, plus they have cleverly put all disclaimers of having no responsibility for the content, i don’t know how it will hold in court of law. But i am sure by the time it goes down who ever is behind it would have made a whole lot of money.

I am sure cost of production of this box is cheap but its really the supply chain and viral marketing that has really sky rocketed the product sales.

Ohh let us know if you also feel that the logo is familiar to some thing you have seen before

While going through my usual read lists of the feeds I got a heading from Engadget which had the following title

Scrybe from Synaptics brings new life to your tired touchpad

now if you have been following the Pakistani tech scene for some time most of you would be aware of the hype and excitement Scrybe generated in the local IT Industry.

their innovating flash based product was not only noticed all over the world but it was appreciated and was termed as the next step in web apps by many of the renowned bloggers including Michael Arrington of TechCrunch

Scrybe Could Set a New Standard In Office Apps

and by Robert Scoble on Scobelizer

Scrybe gets you organized

and CNet went as far as to term it the Demo of Gods

following this they were funded by Adobe (first for a Pakistani Firm to be funded by such a corporation ) and LMKR

However unfortunately we did not hear a lot from them after these huge waves, their blog has been silent for a long time. And though the site is functional and i can still use it for my calendar but there is no more activity.

How ever all this aside, I am sure that Scrybe did get their trademarks registered because without it, it would not have been possible for Adobe or any other firm to invest in it. and the tm on top of their logo also suggest it

How can some other firm and that too some one as high profile as Synaptics can ignore this while naming their product google Scrybe still returns as the iScrybe site as the top most result, what went through their initial research still eludes me. and for my untrained eye and legal sense this is a clear infringement of copyright

In my personal opinion Scrybe (iScrybe) should go after them with litigation if they can.

UPDATE

As researched and mentioned by our long time reader Anthony here apparently iScrybe did not register a trademark and it was open for grabs googling scrybe still results as iScrybe as the first hit though.

here is his comment which i think should be made part of original post.

Scrybe had its trademark application filed September 24, 2009. It received trademark 77834002. The trademark is live and belongs to Synaptics Incorporated. There is only one live trademark for Scrybe. There is no trademark issued for iScrybe.

It appears that iScrybe did not register a trademark, in favour of attempting to use Scrybe as an unregistered trademark, as the ‘TM’ above indicates.

Just a quick update on my end, I am travelling to the United States will be back on 20th of January.
Due to my nature of trip and limited access to Internet, I wont be able to stay on top of every thing and will not be able to post, apologies for it.
If how ever you have some thing to write about do let me know send the article or account creation request and I will try to address it at my earliest
Thanks for sticking around

Osama Hashmi today officially handed me over this beacon of Green & White.

My affiliation with green and white is a bit old about 3 years to be precise, I started as a reader, then started commenting and finally Osama gave me the opportunity to write about different people issues a topic which was very close to my heart. This addiction to startup and entrepreneur ship took me on a path where me an Osama walked together for about 2 years before i being the weaker one came back to the safety of corporate job.

When Osama talked to me about handing over this responsibility I was apprehensive, it is a tough ask the standard he leaves behind would be hard to match, similarly the ability to talk his mind no matter what and criticize objectively is some thing i need to learn from him. For me his best post remains this one

http://greenwhite.org/2007/06/28/what-hitech-entrepreneurs-can-learn-from-a-sabzi-waala/

He showed us all that there is entrepreneur ship happening in the closed doors in Pakistan, inspired a lot (including my self) to try their luck.

I alone can’t take this site any where alone, would need active support from you all, I have a few things on my mind circling along the lines as to where we can help and connect the industry and academia and students, what we can do to help the budding entrepreneur how do we make sure they grow into profitable businesses.

You have any idea shoot it in comments emails I will surely respond.

As for Osama, Sir as Salman Munir has said you can’t go away we would not let you, and this definitely should not be your last post. And will seek your guidance.

For me he will always remain a good friend and a mentor who showed me what all new media is about.