Kolkata based InfoSoft Global has released a PowerPoint add-in called oomfo to add visual effects, charts, interactivity and animation from a simple GUI within PowerPoint. oomfo is powered by FusionCharts, an open source data visualization app for web applications.

As the visualization done is on top of flash technology omfo requires Adobe Flash Player 8 or above to view the chart, presently in beta its totally free and supports Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. The company plans to release the add-in app in standard and premium version and later being the paid one.

oomfo provides the ease to build animations, charts, data visualization as very easy GUI and within the PowerPoint which is as far as I can see the only product vailable for free so far with these kind of features, however RichChartLive is one other free product but lacks far more features, stunning visuals and crispier animation & visualization that ommfo does.

SimplyBooks.in is a new book portal launched today in World Book Fair’10, New Delhi. As the name hints the portal is online bookshop targeting Indian customers initially and at moment in beta stage. Simplybooks is launched by startup based in Gurgaon, India that also runs a Finance community portal called feeleminds.com

The portal carries the same traits and features like to those online bookshop already exist in market however some features and an impressive UI which is comparatively far better than Indian books portal we see such as Rediff books, Indiatimes, flipkart.com etc.  The portal carries features such as book search – by author, category, book title etc. The portal also offer related products such as CDs, Magazines and Journals in one domain as I dont see any one portal in India which provide all of these.

Keeping in mind the beta stage of portal Simplybooks.in looks promising in terms of number of books, user interface and more web 2.0 features than any existing in Indian market except that of flipkart.com. Morever, the entry of one more online bookshop portal will make the stagnant online book selling market to rise above, if changes due to competition is considered.

As a Web developer/ designer my self I have got a mail for an opening and am stunned seeing the desired profile they are looking for, thought I gotto blog this so as to propagate ever demanding typical Indian web/ internet sector and when it comes to offer to their employees be it employee satisfaction or the salary part it always like offering peanuts.

Below is the description of desired Job Profile of that mail, I have got in my inbox;

Opening for Web developer -

We have currently opening with our Client for Web Developer
Experience : 4+ yrs to 6 yrs
Location: Noida

(Marketing Department)

Responsibilities include:

Design, Develop, Test, Maintain and Support Web applications, Emailers, Online Brochures and online marketing banners, ads etc.

Web Design and Development of all areas including administration, technical specifications, user interface design, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP/ASP.NET, Flash, CMS integration.

Ensuring strong functionality and Search Engine Optimization of websites and applications

To develop web page infrastructure and application related to pages with more advanced graphics and features

Testing the site’s for functionality in different browsers and at different resolution

4+ years of experience Experience and Understanding of Online Ecommerce Businesses.

Expert knowledge of (X)HTML and CSS1/2; intermediate experience in JavaScript/DHTML/Ajax, XML/XSLT, Javascript

Knowledge of LAMP

Familiar with many content management/automation/templating systems such as Blogger, WordPress, Joomla, phpBB & Drupal.

A flexible attitude with proven experience of working in a small team

Excellent communication skills and attention to detail

Experience working with design softwares like Adobe Photoshop, Flash 5.0, Gif animator, Html, Dreamweaver Experience developing Flash intros

Web marketing marketing/promotion, advertising skills

Passion about integrating the power of interactive capabilities into all aspects of marketing strategy.

Awareness and ability to analyze performance and communicate analysis while presenting ideas for improvement and/or changes.

It would be great of you also have:

Basic understanding of Domain Name registration, Web hosting, Email hosting, DNS and experience on one of the Hosting Control Panels like Cpanel, Ensim or Plesk.

Experience working on Ruby on Rails

Please respond with your updated word resume, expected salary and notice period details.

Thanks,
######
#######

I believe that for a single person to have all these above skills  and especially all PHP + ASP.NET + RoR + Flash + designing + testing is next to impossible. Do comment and give your opinions and thoughts on same and about your satisfaction level in your job or related things and especially if you are a web developer.

Photo Credits – Justin Cormack

The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay organizing an event called Vulture’s Nest part of Entrepreneurship Summit 2010 which is first event of its kind in the history of Indian entrepreneurship. Its uniqueness comes from its express funding concept and it’s format as a reality show to be aired on ET Now channel starting January 2010.

In the event plus realty show those who are on verge of building any potential start-ups and having one or more business plans with themselves than after selection phase they will have to pitch their ideas to a panel of investors including top VCs in 15 minutes and if they like the idea than participants might get an on-spot express funding.

ET Now would be airing all three strategic events on a segmented basis on their show starting up in January next year.

Vultures nest is a three phase event. The first phase is an online submission of the presentation starting 10 Dec.’09 to 4th Jan.’10. The second phase will be between 16 Jan.- 17 Jan. 2010 which is a preliminary elimination round which is going to be held in 3 cities – Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The Final round will have 10 Finalist to pitch in front of VCs.

The format of show make it the first of its kind in India, however the similar format were being aired on western countries including an event in Seattle, US called Startup Junkies and similar one in New Zealand .

Are you building software products from India? Does the vision of being responsible for the next Windows ™ or Firefox™ or Oracle™ keep you up late at night? Do you believe that it is certainly possible to create world-beating products right here, right now?

The flagship event for software product companies in India – NASSCOM Product Conclave 09 Mecca of Indian Product and High Technology Companies– happening in Bangalore on Oct 27-28 – in its 3rd successful year…

..Know more of NASSCOM Event »

If you have been making and maintaining your profiles around social networking sites in India, than you can not deny that people are more interested these days in networking sites which have professional bent and career oriented rather than throwing just chatting words and scraps.

In India more and more Professional Networking sites are coming in and not from just small scale start-ups but big brands too such as Times of India Group and Info Edge (company behind 99acres.com, naukri.com).

Here are few top Indian based Professional Networking sites that are making quite good impression over Indian audience.

Brijj.com is online professional network from same company who is behind 99acres.com and Naukri.com, the networking site launched in August 2007 and still in beta, has now gradually emerging as choice of people’s own pro-networking site.

PeerPower.com is another big brand supported Pro-networking community portal and little different to other networking portals in its peer portal. The portal is flagship of Time Business Online Pvt. Ltd. and its too in beta mode earlier it was in closed beta users mode.

SiliconIndia – It is one most rapidly growing professional networking although carry more of a news aggregating site’s features and traits. The home page consist of news pieces and stories rather than any professional network portal although when when navigated deeply will how you few good professional communities, groups, jobs and career related content.

Kreeo.com – Kreeo is a web based knowledge-based networking for companies, individuals and institutions who can build their own networks of knowledge along with tools such as news feeds, content sharing and forums etc.

ApnaCircle is one of the first Professional and career networking sites in India among all in this list. Sabeer Bhatia, Hotmail creator is among core producers of the portal. The portal has both social and professional networking features is frequently making changes to lure users.

SysInclude is professional networking for IT professionals, the portal at moment is by invitation only. Moreover the portal offer two kind of account one is individual and other corporate account, while the former one is free and later is paid and will have more features that will help manage the recruiting process and have better search capabilities for corporates.

Wapr.com – its is perhaps the most recent entrant in business & professional networking portals in India. Its a bit different portal in its niche, providing some really nice features for both companies and professionals as their different user-base and targeting them differently.

iProBook – This is one professional networking portal yet to be released though i found its underground URL from google here as iProbook in Labs. The portal has clean and user friendly UI and plenty of good interactive features and all about creating and managing your business/ professional networks. What impressed me is its clean UI and use of ajax scripts at perfect places.

TooStep is yet another professional community portal, however it gives an impression of some portfolio management tool or so, reason being fragmented UI and its content element. The portal is more about building community of professional and exchange, discuss, debate about topics, ideas etc.

DataQuest, one of an oldest and most read magazine on IT, in association with IndianWeb2.com has created well created list of Hottest Web 2.0 Startups in India, thanks to DataQuest Research team and Editor Shyamanuja.

The Dataquest team and editors included those startups in India which become operational on or after 1 January 2007 and then refined that list to come with this list of prominent ones.

The interesting part of the list is that, companies and startups have been excluded where collaboration and user particiaption, which is a main trait and feature of any web 2.0 entity is not prominent such as PicSquare, Zoomin and iTasveer.com where hey do have features such as sharing photos but they more rely on parameters other than what “Web 2.0″ concept is i.e. photo print quality, time of delivery of their products etc.

The “India’s 25 Hot Web 2.0 Start-ups” is a cover story published in May issue of Datquest published by Cyber Media publication and circualted nationwide. You may get the the copy of Dataquest from any nearest book seller and get more insight of the story along with deatails of 25 hot startups with founders of respective startups throwing more lime-light on same.

Update :

News Published in leading dailies -

Times of India -
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4530503.cms

Sify -
Big Adda, Forpper among Hot Web 2.0 Startups

CyberMedia Press Release -
http://www.cybermedia.co.in/press/pressrelease124.html

Dhingana, an India based social platform around entertainment has been announced as winner and felicitated the best opensocial application award for its App called Bollywood Music in an event called WeekendApps (opensocial Blog) on Opensocial development for developers and entrepreneurs.

This event was a full weekend event at the Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California and the idea was to start on Friday evening 19th Feb and completely design, build and deploy an opensocial app within 1.5 days. All the apps that would be completed would go live on Sunday evening 22nd. The sponsors, namely Google, BuddyPoke, Sun would then hold an award ceremony and declare 2 of the best app as winners and the other winner is BuddyQuiz.

More then 100 developers and entrepreneurs turned up for this event. The App Bollywood Music was highlighted as the one for it’s well designed UI, native orkut implementaion and the overall vision for the app.

The main features of the App Bollywood Music are:

• Allowing users to discover music with their frieds using the rich orkut social graph, send musical scraps to their friends,
• Dedicate songs or playlists to their friends,
• Create and share playlists (will be released in 1 week)
• Search for songs and maintain the musical history for all users,
• Mine all the musical data, from all orkut users and display the most heard songs and playlists on the application home page

Zimblee, an Indian Startup from Pune has launched as a tool to create an online ad and promote company or even blog, social networking page, or favorite charitable cause within a social network like Facebook.

Zimblee is a web-based self-service ad creator platform and apparently world’s first truly custom online ad creator tool designed for advertisers, agencies, and small business owners.

Zimblee has intuitive interface, point and click, drag and drop customization tools enable first-time users as well as experienced marketers to create professional, effective and fully customized display ads for the
internet efficiently and affordably. Users can upload logos and images of their choice through built in library.

Moreover, the tool has patent pending platform that allows a user to not only create a display ad, but also promote their company, blog, favorite charitable cause, or personal page within a social network. The ability to launch a Zimblee custom ad to a social network provides the marketer with an new medium for advertising. The Zimblee application for social networks is a first of its kind in online advertising.

Zimblee is a Yureekah Inc. Company founded by Vishal Sharma and Devaraj Southworth,
serial entrepreneurs with backgrounds in media and consulting. The Company recently secured a
round of angel investment and will be looking to secure its Series A in the coming months. In
addition will be looking to partner with several major publishers who wish to utilize Zimblee
services.

SMSResume.in is new web start-up from India in its very young phase eventhough worthy for many as it enables users makes it possible to send their resumes via SMS over their cellphones. The process is – users needs to register at www.smsresume.in, upload resume on the site for once and thereafter can send resumes through their cellphones only.

The service comes handy especially for those job seekers who have to apply urgently for a job and when there is no internet connection available at any point of time. To availe the service for free, the users needs to register at www.smsresume.in, upload one’s resume on the site and then, whenever the need be, shoot off the resume by sending an SMS to 9711532380 in pre-defined format i.e. Resume <hr emailid> (example: Resume career@xyzcompany.com).

User would even receive Email notification from smsresume.in as the smsresume server send a BCC copy to users’ email id and informs that the resume has been successfully delivered to the recipient.