Refresh Colombo - July 2011

After missing the last two events I was very eager to attend the July edition of Refresh Colombo. I was very bitter about missing the last edition because there was a presentation about mobile marketing. I guess you can't have everything in life. There was a huge crowd for the event, probably somewhere close to 150. This is the largest crowd I have seeing after the FireFox party. The organizers were actively promoting the event by mailing previous participants and encouraging them to display poster in there offices and universities and the large crowd could be a result of that. Kudos to @nazly, @alokag, @HamidAfzal and everyone else who plays a part in organizing such a useful event.

MongoDB

The first presentation was about MongoDB, done by Dinesh and Susantha. A nice comparison was done between the traditional databases and mongoDB.Different situations where mongoDB can improve performance in certain cases were also discussed. There was a small demonstration as well showing how easy it is to add, delete and modify records etc. From what I understood the main idea with mongoDB is to reduce the disk space as much as possible and thereby improve performance. ( mongoDB experts feel free to correct me in the comments section). Another good things about mongoDB is you don't need to do any installations. Its just matter of running an executable file. Since I'm having trouble installing various Oracle versions and finding compatible PLSQL developer versions this sounds like a great idea. And there are no JOIN's :-) . I hate joins, specially when there are like four joins in one big view.

Social Media beyond Marketing

The next presentation was by Thushara Hettihamu who is a senior manager in Dialog Axiata. He spoke about how dialog is using social media to respond to customer inquiries etc. I have being using Twitter for a while now and have seeing some complains about dialog and its a good things that they are actively using social media to counter those things. If you want a quick response from dialog the best things to do is post it on there Facebook walls, buy the looks of things you are guaranteed a quick response. In answering a question he briefly talked about how to handle negative reviews as well. Early that morning I attended the Digital Dojo by Ogilvy and some facts mentioned there were also mentioned in the video Hetti showed. Internet and social media users are rising in Sri Lanka and if you don't respond to its as a brand you might find yourself losing customers and crushed by competitors. There were some questions about fair usage policy and things were just about to interesting when Nazly jumped in and ruined the fun :P .

Future of Web Apps

The next presentation was by Lakshan Perera and he talked about the future of web apps. Although I'm a software engineer I wouldn't call myself a hardcore geek and this presentation was a bit beyond me. But since lots of techies come for Refresh I'm sure many of them enjoyed it a lot.

Mobile Trends - From Symbian to Android

The next presentation was done by Thejo, who gave a very entertaining presentation. He talked about how Symbian failed both the users and the developers. If you listened to his presentation you might get the feeling that Symbian was the worst creation made by mankind. But he gave some really good examples of why Symbian failed. Although he talked about the OS one general message you can get from his speech is keep things simple. The world, specially the technological developments are moving at a fast pace and you should make it easier for people for keep in touch with your developments. He also talked about the difference in revenue model, which was another factor that made developers switch to Android. A very entertaining presentation I'm sure enjoyed by many.

TweetupSL 2

After that there was a announcement about TweetupSL. Which is an informal meetup of Twitter users in Sri Lanka. You get a T-Shirt if you register quickly for the event ;) . Using social media is much more effective when you know the person in real life and these events are the perfect opportunity to build connections.

Bus Route Finder

There was another presentation which was not on the agenda and that was the introduction of the much talked about bus route finder by Chav. It seems to work fine for the destinations I checked. It is an open source project so can check out the code and give feedback or make improvements.
Another great Refresh Colombo event and definitely looking forward for the next one. If you are not attending you are missing out on a lot and it is definitely not a geek only thing.

Getting a Housing Loan in Sri Lanka

Getting a housing loan in Sri Lanka can be a very tedious and a time consuming task. There are so many documents to produce and so many approvals to get that you might be forgiven for thinking it is better not to buy a house at all.
Looking at the advertisements in television you might think that it is something that can be done in two three days but it sure takes a whole lot more than that. It becomes worse if you have misplaced an important document or you have an outdated document. Some bank wants documents that are less than ten years old so they can be assured about the validity of the document. After producing all that they you need to pay additional charges for the registration and for lawyers. This can be done for an reduced price if you have some sore of connection with the lawyer, otherwise it will cost a considerable amount.
I thought finding a house for sale in Sri Lanka is a hard task, but it looks like buying it is even harder. In certain areas of the country its becoming hard to buy houses for even relatively rich people. Just do a quick search for villas for sale in Galle Fort and you'll know what I'm talking about.
I had a quick chat with a friend in real estate and according to him one of the main reasons is foreigners buying real estate in Sri Lanka as investments. Now I know that the government made a big deal about not selling land to foreigners, but as my friend told me the government actually needs these investments. Most foreigners and buying them and renting them out to other foreigners and more foreigners that comes to Sri Lanka better it it for our economy. Its just not that great when you're trying to buy a land or home for yourself.

Trying Out Different Ad Networks

I get so many emails asking me how to get approved for Adsense. The reality is if you don't have your own domain name then it is next to impossible to get accepted to the Adsense network. This was probably a step taken to get rid of all the spammers who create blogs using free platforms and fill them with advertisements, but the step has hurt some genuine bloggers as well. If you have a hard time getting accepted to Adsense then you should check out some alternatives to Adsense as well. I personally use InfoLinks so if you are interested then you can read my InfoLinks Review. I added some extra tips on how to improve your earnings as well.
If you have a hard time getting accepted to international networks then you could try some local network as well. There are some advertisement networks specific to Sri Lankan's but the payout is a bit low per click. You might be able to get some advantage because of the high click through rate as they are related. If you are looking to make money online then it is important to get your own domain names, so the best way to get accepted to Adsense might be getting your own domain.

Mobile Phone Recycling in Sri Lanka

Today I got a very interesting question from a friend who came from UK. He looked at all the old mobile phones stored in a rack and asked me why I'm not recycling old mobile phones. I thought mobile phone recycling is something to do with protecting the environment, but I was surprised to learn that it means getting cash for your old mobile phones. It is also used when people give there old mobile phone and get the latest model for a discounted price. He went on to explain the environmental and the social benefits of the whole procedure. I personally don't know of any company in Sri Lanka that offers money for old mobile phones, and it might be not a good business idea especially since most Sri Lankans are on the lookout for the latest mobile phone models. Anyway it seems like a good idea to recycle those old mobile phones because they are potentially harming wasts.

Refresh Colombo - April 2011

I'm not a big fan of rain, it usually means lightning is around and I have to switch off the computer. I absolutely hate it when it rains when I need to go out. So I was contemplating whether to go for Refresh Colombo this time, especially because today everything was going to be about Firefox 4 and related stuff. Although I love the browser with all its plug-ins, talking about how it was developed didn't really appeal to me. But so far Refresh Colombo managed to serve up something new and worthwhile in every meeting so I thought of braving the weather and going for the meetup. And it turned out to be the correct decision :-) .

HTML5
The first presentation was about HTML5 and it was done by Dilantha Nanayakkara. He went through a slide show ( http://slides.html5rocks.com/ ) and explained the contents of the slides. The guy has being building websites since 1996 so I'm sure he appreciates the new features in HTML5. One thing I noticed while attending meet ups is that it is increasingly getting easier to build cool looking websites, will this lead to a reduction in prices :P ? Anyway I mostly build niche blogs using WordPress and you can build a cool looking blog easily enough if you have a decent WordPress theme. Here is my recent niche blog about Birthstone Jewelry which took me around 30 minutes to set up, it still needs some dressing up with a decent header images but setting up navigation etc is so easy with WordPress.

Firefox 4 Party
The next event was the Firefox 4 party and there was a big cake sponsored by the Cake Factory. I guess Dilantha was the oldest guy at the event so he was given the honor of cutting the cake. After the refreshments various features of Firefox 4 and Firefox for mobile were discussed. Danishka Navin showed some videos explaining the various new features. I have only used the "Pin as App Tab" so it was interesting to get to know about the new features. I was impressed by the new Firefox button which saves a lot of space. If your using Windows as the operating system this doesn't come as default. To get the button you need to go to View -> Toolbar and deselect the Menu Bar. I think it is a good idea if Firefox explains how to enable these features while listing down features.Thejo explained how Firefox 4 mobile version has improve the user experience and some more cool new features. We were also given some Firefox souvenirs to remember the event. You can view some photos of the party visiting this link ( via Malintha ).

Firefox 4 Discussion by Sinhalen FOSS
Next item was a panel discussion about Firefox4 hosted by the Sinhalen FOSS team. Sinhalen FOSS is the first Sinhalese podcast and they discuss various things related to FOSS. Although I'm a software engineer I hardly consider myself a geek but I found the session thoroughly entertaining. Bud and SeeJay were joined by Danishka and Thejo in the panel. Various things including how you can contribute to the open source community were discussed. If a non geek like myself enjoyed it I think this podcast will be perfect for geeks. I couldn't find any pattern to there podcast so I guess subscribing to the RSS feed is the best way to keep track of them.
Although I enjoyed the session I personally think it would be a good idea if they diversify the topics discussed at Refresh Colombo so a much wider audience can benefit from it. Maybe this was a one off because of the FF4 party. Looking forward to the May edition :-) .