When we first started StepOut, I used to get really stressed out by the dissonant signals that come from the day-to-day of running a web startup.   There's just so much shit that can go wrong when you're shooting to build a $100mm+ company. Lately, I've come to view dissonance as part of the process.  You can't scale a company without it.  It's kind of like in music when the composer creates Read the article >>

This weekend I went through my first zen retreat.   My interest in meditation has ebbed and flowed over the past several years.  The scientific evidence is piling up - Meditation increases mental clarity, healthy sense of self,  critical thinking, decreases depression, and my personal experience seems to comport -- it increases overall mental well-being.  As an engineer, my mind is often spinning Read the article >>

Yesterday, on July 28th, 2012, Sergey Brin gave a demo of Google Glass at the Google I/O conference.   He announced that the Google Glass for Developers would be available in early 2013.   The finalized version of the Google Glass, the one for consumers, will be not released until 2014, at the earliest.  The google glass release date is still unannounced. The technology behind this product, Read the article >>

Steve Jobs would practice Management By Walking Around. It's somewhat ironic that the once-a-smelly-hippy turned CEO of Apple with no business school experience, and an attitude of anathema to traditional management school, would practice such a commonly-espoused management technique. Peer coding at StepOut. It's simple but powerful technique - just get up from your desk, walk around, roll up your Read the article >>

Foremost, stop yourself from distractions. Study your change request, first, as a user of your product. Do not forget that before you were an engineer, you were a user. Read and re-read the objectives and their supporting data, let them marinate with your conception of your product. Open your browser, type in your products URL & immerse yourself, but only with your user mind. Understand the Read the article >>

From the handy tip department: It's really nice to have built-in in-line logging for your application. I'm often asked to debug issues in StepOut's application that would be tough to handle if I was just dropping `echo()` and `die()s` everywhere. In particular, performance issues are a pain to debug without a built-in infrastructure that can spit out performance statistics at any time. Of course Read the article >>

What are google glasses? Google Project Glass is a product that Google is working on, in the R & D stages.   It can be described as a wearable augmented reality display, designed to allow users to perform computing tasks hands-free.  Instead of using a keyboard and mouse, users would speak commands, which would then be translated from natural langauge commands into commands for the device via Read the article >>

The first thing people ask me when they haven't seen me in a while is "How's StepOut?". I find it playfully amusing that, to others, I'm the "Indian online dating guy". Not because I have any particular special amused sentiment towards India, online dating, or the web itself, just because it's something I never thought I'd be doing professionally. Work as Self I used to hate pitching the company. Read the article >>

One of the biggest challenges you'll faces as a technical co-founder of a social startup is that of equanimity. You sit at the intersection of product and technology. The contrast in approaches in those areas is often under-stated and always under-recognized. In product, as CTO, you're injected into the thought-stream torrent that results in strategic decision making, yet have little-to-no influence Read the article >>

I have a new personal maxim. For myself. And a new personal standard for the people I spend time with, both socially & professionally, in 2012. Create more value than you capture. ~Tim O'Reilly As we grow our business, I'm finding than the type of people that are worth my time follow this maxim, whether consciously or unconsciously. Think about the traits of someone who creates more value Read the article >>