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General
Team at Qurtaba have added another front to their impressive Urdu language based apps, they have launched their Alif Bay Pay app for Amazon Kindle, as well. Earlier it was released on iTunes.
I love what Qurtaba are doing in a niche area of Urdu Language. Although their start was from Nan-Map for which they now have an iPhone App.There love for Urdu language related apps has been flourishing in recent months. Most of their apps are doing very well on app store, some impressive numbers for their popular Urdu apps are as follows.
Urdu Writer: 10K downloads in 3 months – average 200 downloads…
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Featured Startup General
I happened to be in Quetta on a business trip last month with no idea of where to dine alone. Being a typical Lahoriite, a die-hard food lover, it matters to me that I try the best food of the place I visit. So this is where FCPakistan came to my rescue. I simply logged in, typed in my desired specifications and got atleast 5 suggestions.
The listing included their opening times, specific facilities like ease for physically disabled customers, credit card acceptance, smoking areas, take away facility, whether valet parking was available or not, and even directions to get there! What more could you want.
Although that was the…
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Featured Startup General
If you have any thing to do with entrepreneurship, its impossible you have not come across Jawwad Farid either in person or in virtual world of his blogs and judging different events realting to startups in Pakistan. He is also the author of Reboot which we reviewed a while back.
Jawwad has been writing on Finance, Risk and Treasury for some time now on learning corporate finance.
I guess that has lead to FourQuants.com. FourQuants helps people understand concepts related to finance. Following topics are mentioned in about us section of the website
- Risk management
- Derivatives products
- Option pricing models
- Basel and capital adequacy regulation
- Financial modeling
- Treasury
…
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Coffee Session General Marketing/Adv
OLX is a global online retailer and auction site. They have an impressive footprint in a little less than 100 countries, each with their own specific domain (like .pk for Pakistan and .in for India).
In Pakistan they have been operating under olx.com.pk for some time with people using it to sell things online.
Recently they have started advertising heavily on Television, a medium seldom used by online businesses previously. The ads (two of which have appeared ) are witty and fun to watch.
The most important factor of these adds is that they are being advertised on media which previously none of our online businesses have used.
Most of…
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General
Round 1 of TiE is about to reach its completion on 22nd of Jan, 2012 at Marriott, Islamabad in which ten teams will participate. Four teams will be shortlisted for the level 2. I also had the opportunity to participate in TiE All Asia Business Plan Competition 2012 along with my team members in the first few stages of level 1. Although we didn’t have the chance to go beyond stage1 but just participating helped us understand our own idea better and to polish our proposed technique along with development of a solid business plan. TiE all Asia Business Plan Competition provides a platform for generation and development of new…
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Announcements General Mobile Apps Software & I.T.
TenPearls has announced the successful delivery of mobile apps for Dawn.com on multiple platforms, including Apple iOS (iPad and iPhone), Android and Symbian (Nokia). The mobile apps have received great feedback from the users from around the world. It may be worth mentioning here that DAWN.COM is the #1 English News website from Pakistan averaging over 16 million page views a month, and 3.1 million unique visitors from around the world.
More details can be accessed at mobile apps for Dawn Media Group by TenPearls.
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General
CIO Pakistan started blog awards last year. Its is a good sign when some one takes initiative and starts some thing new. However its also difficult to introduce this into an already budding field of new media in Pakistan. Last years (or two years back now since its 2012) Awards were initiated so as it is expected it faced initial growing up pains. It always takes time for such thing to wins the trust of the community. And bloggers are one of the most hard people to win over, most of these are rebels in their own rights people who have started blogging to show the world their opinion…
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Featured Startup General
Pakreport.org a tool which was instrumental in gathering statistics during the massive flooding in Pakistan, has created another study/stats gathering tool for our electoral activities. Interestingly its called do we vote
With political scene in Pakistan heating up it provides very valuable information to party supporters and their leaders. A quick look at it shows the all known facts that people in rural areas take their voting more seriously than all of us supposedly educated and enlightened urban population.
Pakreport.org was an initiative launched by Faisal Chohan of BrightSpyre during the floods, the effort enabled people on the ground to send sms (the most spread out communication medium in country)…
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Featured Startup General
This is a revelation that came to me when I recently quit my comfy corporate job for the second time. If you are below 40 and some one asks you about how is your job going and your answer is not in tune of “I like my job because I love the work”.
You need to pause and asses your career, last time I answered this question my answer was “I like the job, because the benefits are good”, and that made me think (offcourse there were other factors as well). But if you are doing a job in which to satisfy your own self you have to look at…
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11:17 am
Well I dont agree with you..
Reason: I m taking a project management course these days, and only thing i have been told or i have learnt is that the developer i.e. coder is not fit for the senior positions like project managerr cuz they have different approach towards SDLC.
When in university i m being taough that being coder is not a good thing or i might say not much respectable…. then why should i look forward to career in it..rather do some non-techi job …
young grads are not to blamed its the senior ppl in our industry whom brainwashing is required.
12:17 pm
Nausheen,
Your perspective is valid, and I’m glad to see more people atleast see it in a practical way.
Consider this tho: So what if everyone brainwashed you guys into believing that coding jobs are bad — now that you know they were wrong you should think about giving it a serious look.
The problem is people create an image as if “Project Manager” are higher in the company hierarchy than “coders”.
That’s completely false — project managers hold greater liability than coders, but they are equal people with just different roles.
It does happen that PM typically need some good experience in the market with actual SDLCs before they will be asked to manage software projects.
That experience is better learnt on the front lines, where you can atleast understand the coders perspective of the SDLC, and then learn the PM techniques of optimizing it.
Other than that, “coding” as a career is still bright — you have coding -> design -> business analysis / architecture -> Director Engr -> VP Engr -> CTO.
That’s the entire “coding” / Technical career stack. Even if there isn’t too much respect in “coding”, why give up on the chance to become someone respectable like Architect / VP Engr?
That’s what I mean when I say the youth are giving up too early by seeking an easy way out.
Project Management, on the other hand, is a completely different field altogether.
That said, I do agree that it is the responsibility of teachers in college to instill this bigger picture of career paths, but dont me started on how much that is lacking.
12:32 pm
Also one thing you should always remember is that core asset for any technology company is not the project managers it is the coding or technology people.
1:15 pm
osama u r right, Another reason for this is there is no career counciling of IT grads and no one tells them what are various career paths to follow. they just do what might be their seniors doing or some of their friends.
and qazi Although coders+tech ppl are most important asset for working of the company not for the company impt decision making process.
they are treated like 3rd world countries are treated by western world.
1:38 pm
Nausheen, I think engineers are in many cases the important decision-makers
1. Manage schedule keep track of projects.
2. Manage Resources risks hire fire people
Project managers rarely become technology experts the Coders/Engineers are the ones who after experience dictate or architect how some thing is to be done. also they are also the ones who tell the Project managers how long it will take to do some thing. Project managers are the ones co-ordinating.
putting it better. Coders/Engineers are the artist/creator, Project managers is the agent who sets up sale of their art work and collects the money acting as a interface between the artist and the customer
And believe me I have seen more times then less a Coder/Engineer being paid more than the Manager
2:11 pm
Qazi, I think that’s what she meant.
Engineers are the backbone of the company, but I have seen many companies where their input is not considered in the decision-making / planning process for the software.
Unfortunately there DOES exist a precedence that says the Project Manager inherently are better and know more than coders — this type of a culture is very negative for an engineering environment, and precisely what I wrote about in the “Why engr are afraid of becoming coders…” post.
3:19 pm
Well in my opinion
Most of the times the Managers ar ethe person who are in lime light
i m talkign specifically about the IT culture in pakistan not in other countries
the coders are back benchers in this case
only clapping on the “successful project” their Managers done and grabbed all the praise.
My only issue is the coders/developers must get their due respect and share in the lime light as well.
4:24 pm
I think Nausheen points out a culture problem in Pakistan – very valid.
On the contrary, in US for example there are many developers who started their company by writing the code for their product.
The one thing which I learned: smart people can adapt to do anything, all they need is motivation. As long as coders dont have a narrow focus they can be effective managers and leaders.
10:30 pm
Working around with corporates and getting my hands dirty with startups, I have managed number of projects and had to involve in ‘coding’ some time or other. So I would definitely say that coding isn’t bad at all. In fact, to me, “code is poetry”