http://greenwhite.org/2007/09/21/aboutusorg-dev-office-in-lahore-what-do-they-do/

AboutUs kept going ahead Ray King was a smart entrepreneur even at the height of economic crises AboutUs secured a 2.5 Million USD Funding, and recently went ahead and bought another startup Jyte in January.

How ever it seems all is not well,  they recently closed their Lahore office, here is the post from Ray’s own blog to confirm it. What could have gone wrong?

Let me be very clear here I don’t believe that closing of Lahore office had any thing to do with revenues or cost cutting, because just a couple of months back they acquired a company if it was for getting money for that, the closure would have come before the acquisition, and nothing suggests that their revenues have dwindled, for me the problem lies some where else.

I have been aware of AboutUs Lahore setup from start till very recently, AboutUs started with a lot of passion in Lahore I remember their first employees were paid huge premiums about 20~30k above market price for fresh grads which created a lot stir in the local IT startups, It was a dream company with high wages beautiful office location and brand new power full PCs, it was a startup environment with lots of money. Engineers got to work on their own projects which were both complex and cutting edge, and content writers were paid heavily for doing what they loved to do.

How ever until recently all was well, then there was a change, the management which setup the office here went away, as far as I know AboutUS tried to remotely manage the Lahore office and the people in middle management tried to grab the vacant top position and unfortunately some times it happens to us as a nation to get to the top the easiest way we know is to trample some one else. I am not sure and can’t confirm that this is the only reason but I am sure that some one sitting miles away if feels rift with in the team it does not bode well. Also if it means that their concentration is divided into solving internal office issues instead of growing the business they might do what Ray has done, it is unfortunate for us though.

Disclaimer : The speculations in this posts are based on first person info got from several people attached with aboutus.

Forgive me if i seem a little biased towards this game but my whole child has passed around a carom board as it was kind of a family game .

So back to the game, it is one of the things most of us have thought about why not take our local game on line, why don’t we have a version of ludo, but then a lot of us are just thinkers and few go ahead and do it. same is the case with these two gentle men Ata Krimani and  Shakil Awan, one of them is the developer other is the artist a killer combination for small app production.

Game playability is outstanding, the graphic do bring vivid memories of my childhood. Currently you can play against an AI Computer Characters but they do have plans for multiplayer capabilities in future, other things are similar to a typical facebook game in which your score is displayed on profile etc. The only thing i missed in this game was the delicate cutshot,  and boric powder filled hands. here is the link do give it a shot and don’t blame the wasted time on us

http://apps.facebook.com/carromchallenge/

Here is a short video/

The gameplay for feline frenzy is that you have to throw boots at birds in sky and cats falling from sky, the game is as crazy as it sound yet has a very addictive nature to it. And i loved the tag line.

“ Not all animals are lost, sad, different, suffering from chronic loneliness, ridiculously emo, or begging to be caged in your virtual zoo or barn or farm or island or sock drawer.
No, some animals are uber badass. Beware!”

The good thing about this game is that I did not find it copying or following the foot steps of Farmville and Petsociety (two of the famous games from Zynga and Playfish respectively) the game has a very cute and evil touch to it, I had intended to try is just for the sake of evaluating it but ended up playing it for about half an hour before i realized the time(oh and i reached level 3 ). It has that addictiveness to it, and i did not realize hitting cats with boots was so much fun and i hear there are radio active elephants in later levels.

Here is a small video

Why facebook is a big deal ? Here are few numbers just to see the market size, as of today Farmville (it’s a facebook game) has 81 Million Active Users face book has its own pretty lucrative statistics http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics with 400 million active users where in comparison iPhone will cross 50 million user mark somewhere in 2011.

The effort is led by Hassan Baig who is a LUMS and Duke Grad, with substantial experience on Wallstreet as an investment banker. He has written on TechLahore (his intro also comes from there) these two article really tell how deep his understanding for Social Games is and how he is willing to challenge the status quo here are the link to his two articles.

Social Gaming: A Primer for Pakistani Facebook App Developers

Startups in Pakistan: Getting the mindset right

Best of luck we really need positive thinkers who think beyond “We are in Pakistan so we can’t challenge them”.

here is the link to the fanpage of application

Yesterday was another such day, I received this link to review a side project that Mr Ghulam Akbar had developed based on google tools and in his spare time. What this does I will quote from his blog here

Dynamic Language Tools lets you type Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Farsi and many other languages on any web-page, plus it also converts any of the these roman languages words on any web page to the corresponding phonetic language words. With this tools you can type comments or write blogs in your native language. You can also convert any existing contents like poems, comments and stories on the web pages to the your language

How you use it is simple, add it as a bookmarklet and you are good to go.

Two features i loved about this was

1. Able to translate by selecting a text from the site and translate it on the fly

2. Able to type in generating Urdu font from your browser in any text input area. I some times want to express in Urdu on blog posts of where the audience is inclined towards Urdu or content is around Urdu Adab I guess would make it easy.

Here is the video of how it works for web page translation

For start how about you use this to comment on this post ,

I did a small video to show how it works for input (I did not change any part of greenwhite comment system to make it work ) just used the bookmarklet to activate it ctrl+click on the comment box and wow.

Great job Akbar, keep it up who knows this hobby project becomes your main area of focus.

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.

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.

Pakwheels the hottest community site in Pakistan revolving around cars is reaching a big mile stone of 100,000 Registered Members, We will be reviewing this portal and what makes it tick. We would mostly be focusing on the site itself and some reasons of its success and not at this time about the business and revenue model.

For those of you who are un ware of the site (and seriously the only way you have not come across this would be that you did not google for cars in Pakistan either new or second hand in last five years) pakwheels is a highly active portal catering to every one who is interested in cars from any perspective, be it for buying/selling used cars, getting the latest prices of new cars, or just looking around for classics in cars and mods people do. Some of the impressive stats of the portal are:

Pakwheel has a pageview number of 10 million per month, its in the top 100 sites visited from Pakistan according to alexa. There are about 300 bikes and cars submitted for sale every day!! and the already mentioned figure of 100,000 registered users (just about).

Site was created in 2003 initial focus was to get together car enthusiast to gather together and discuss any thing on wheels, it is said to be founded by Mr Hanif Bhatti. And soon it became the single place for every thing related to wheels, from used cars

Content wise if you have any queries about cars in Pakistan there is rarely any question which will be left un answered, I was impressed by the details placed on the site, I casually had an encounter with the site 4 years back when i was looking for a car for my self, and no  doubtt helped me reach a decision then (I bought a Hyundai Santro new for those who are curious ) based on some reviews, but now when i get back to the same section it gives out impressive details of even the size of rim and tires, weight torque etc. Technically speaking the kind of information available on the site no single person or organization can keep updated.

The success behind Pakwheels is its very active community, the members not only actively visit the site, they meet physically there have been numerous pakwheels get together in all major cities of Pakistan, they have successfully organized rallies featuring rides of members.

There can be multiple reasons for such a successful community based site in Pakistan (I have yet to see another site claim this title), Technically speaking these things are viral in nature but some of the things that might be (again even if you ask the social networking gurus there is no set formula for successful community based site, there are few dos and dont’s and that’s all that exist),

* The openness of the site i don’t have to be a member to benefit from the rich content, this is a good thing if i like it enough and if it fuels my passion I can become a member but until then there are no close doors for members only (posting on a forum is one but all else is open).

* They have very successfully taken the online community and built an offline community which meets on regular basis has races rallies and other activities, the offline branding is pretty strong too with pakwheel T-Shirts and car stickers moving around in town raising curiosity.

* They have picked a niche which had enough passion in it to drive the members to take it on its own, they are not trying to be every thing and nothing, they are clear very clear to their visitors what they are and what content the members can find on the site.

Over all its the most successful execution of community based site i have come across in Pakistan to date, It would be great to see some other sites replicate this community based.

Ohh bye the way i guess some one at Wateen also is trying to copy this check out http://autos.wateen.com but again for community sites the catch up can only happen if you can gather a mass of of followers.

We also have here two such efforts which revolved around the same idea, the first one was Mango which was later bought re branded by UFone and became a UFone Centric VAS as SMS Buddies, the second one which is headed by none other than our own Dr Umar Saif, who has also been a catalyst for some other startups like   Bumpin and the recently funded SeeNReport.

From an opportunity stand point we have a similar ground to play or in fact a better one, the mobile phone Subscribers in Pakistan are a whooping 94.3 Million (Source PTA ) which is an impressive 58% penetration. Compared to that our Internet Penetration is standing at only 5 million (source ISPAK) so the PC to Mobile ratio we have is much higher than what’s in India.

I could not get Number for Mango or Ufone Buddies but Chopaal announced in August that their monthly traffic has exceeded 1,000,000 SMS. How many total SMSes travel our network each day would be a very very high number in my estimate.

I am a very non sms type of mobile phone subscriber but even for me the SMSes I receive and send cross 50 daily (including all the forwarded messages i receive), and I am sure our teenage group who is always clicking on their cell phones even when they are having dinner or talking to you, they send a lot more.

In my opinion Chopaal has a better opportunity of Growth at this time as Mango is already sold, and our Telecom Operators have a tendency to only focus on one VAS at a time so they don’t spend any marketing budget on a VAS few months after the launch (When was the last time you saw an add or mention of Ufone Buddies). Mango Party was rebranded with UFone and Confiz (the creators of the product) work on a revenue sharing model with them, also according to the interview on CIO (Thaks Adil for pointing it out) they have another deployment with Zen telecom, Chopaal as i know is still going solo, only time will tell which business model is more appealing and revenue generating usually in mobile space the services with telco tend to take off earlier but we have also seen products like twitter disrupt the market without any dedicated telco support.

The only issue that i see facing both of these services and any other which is out there is awareness in masses about existence of such a service.

I am 100% sure that the day I tell my younger sister that there is a service out there which will enable her to broadcast one sms to multiple people with the cost of sending only one sms, she will jump on it without thinking for a second. also the type of user base which is target market for this will not even care if they receive a couple of Advertisement for the cost that they save through this.

From an advertisers point of view this is pure gold, if i can send specific marketing messages to specific people and not just send it out to all this is a value proposition that they would pay a premium for, go tell an Internet Provider that they can send text to a specific age group in a specific city for student discount, and see how they drool, so I am sure that getting revenues for this would not be an issue.

And for any such service at this moment the barrier to entry is very low, who ever moves fast and grows a sizable community will have the advantage. The core to success of any such service (Or any social network for the matter is) to grow as fast as they can. I am sure any one can make a twitter clone today but no one can create a user base of that size.

UPDATE:

As noted by our readers and from other sources, i was mistaken in my earlier assumption of Mango being bought by UFone the post is updated, thanks for every one who pointed this out/

The success of iPhone apps has made a lot of local firms wanting to dip their feet in this new market where barrier to entry is not much compared to services projects no long list of successful projects or satisfied clientage required to win your next work. and the success stories are like fantasies, if you hit the right spot the gains are almost un ending.

FiveRivers Technologies which initially branched out as a software development out source from ClearCube (manufacturer of the blade systems) and were responsible for handling the software end of ClearCube. They started and did some exciting local projects with clients such as the remote desktop solution for  mobile phones Foneitall for  ufone.

Recently they launched another subsidiary pepper.pk which would be responsible for launching mobile phone products, they have started of with launching three daily use products for blackberry app, and if my sources are to believe this is just a start of product portfolio they are working on here is a link to the press release for their BerrySnooper app for black berry.

BerrySnooper Finds Lost and Stolen Blackberries, Protects Corporate and Personal Data from Theft

Good luck to them!!

Here is the TC article announcing the win of oDesk at demopit, if you go through the article a lot of emphasis is placed on how oDesk enables monitoring through iPhone.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-demopit-winner-odesk-launches-a-real-time-work-stream-for-your-iphone-and-desktop/

another TC article which covers the app is here

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/29/with-odesks-iphone-app-bosses-can-now-monitor-workers-from-the-beach/

Now most of you if you follow TC regularly would have read through these posts, how ever what most of us are not aware of is that the iPhone app for oDesk was designed right here in Lahore by Geni Team.

This in my opinion is a great achievement in its own regard as it shows the technical expertise our friends in the local industry are growing into, imagine this there are 354,416 providers listed on oDesk as i write this article, (off course all of them are not iPhone developers but i am sure a lot of them are) they picked Geni Team out of so many available options, and not only did Geni team deliver they made them win in TC 50 Demopit which in it self is a tough challenge i am sure the people at TC would have evaluated the quality of the app.

here are the excerpts from oDesk’s own press release

“The access and support we found through the oDesk API Center was fundamental in developing the oDesk iPhone application,” said Khurram Samad from GenITeam, an oDesk provider who developed the oDesk iPhone Application. “oDesk gave us the tools to turn the vision into reality.”

Great job Geni Team, I have heard rumors that they have plenty of more good news coming their way.