The most awaited decision by the country finally came and Musharaf resigned. We saw jubilitation on the streets. People from various segments of society (political workers, students, civil society, lawyers etc.) were dancing and distributing sweets. But the question remains, should we really be celebrating? The is a fact that Pakistani people are the most forgiving and forgetting. Benazir went, we celebrated, Nawaz went, we celebrated and now Musharaf is gone and we were celebrating. Celebrating each departure and welcoming same old faces once again. Gulping NROs down our throats, eating sweets and dancing. I wonder how long this has to go on.

In a country like Pakistan we have so much talent yet very little exposure to utilizing our energies and skills in the right direction. Most of the talented people end up doing ordinary jobs (even though well paid) and when they do see a small glimmer of hope it still gets wasted due to lack of initiative taking abilities.

Most of the startup gatherings I have attended mainly focus on the discussion that Pakistan is not the kind of country you can start business in, light bohat jaati hai and country impression is not good i.e. the stuff that stops you from stepping up and embracing entrepreneurship . Where as more of the focus should be on questions like, how you can kick start? what kind of thought process should be initiated? marketing analysis and your strengths (S.W.A.T analysis).

The blame is not on the organizers of the discussions but has its roots way back in the past. This starts from the institutions we study in. Most of the institutions in Pakistan teach you pretty good stuff but don’t really make you visualize the actual impact of the knowledge being imparted e.g. IT institutions might introduce you to the technologies being used in industry but don’t stress much on how this technology awareness can help you in foreseeing the future. Institutions are producing workaholic machines instead of  visionaries. Whereas institutes like MIT have there own entrepreneurship departments and have there curriculum tuned according to the matter under discussion.

Some of the youngsters who actually dare to jump into the world of business face problems like investment, infrastructure and guidance. This is the second department we are miles behind where we actually should be, if we want to create a favorable environment for the cause. A good session with the pros about the approach towards kicking off a startup might act as a catalyst for the thought process but its not good enough to overcome the fears of investment and infrastructural problems. We are in serious need of incubation schemes and angel investment groups. Its requires more than business idea competitions on frequent basis if we really want to see growth in the startup culture. and thats where the actually motive of this articles comes in.

Dr. Umar Saif has been there on the startup scene for quite sometime now. His latest venture is an incubation scheme known as SCI (Saif Center of Innovation: pronounced as SKY) which is first of its kind in Pakistan and  intends to provide young entrepreneurs with proper training, incubation and environment where they are surrounded by entrepreneurs, advisors and investors. I guess this is the first concrete step towards promoting entrepreneurship in this part of the world and certainly not the last. Its a work in progress and he plans to launch it very soon. The rules are pretty simple, if you have a business idea you have been thinking about for a long time now and could never gather the courage to actually work on it, well now it will be just a business plan away from you. SCI’s prime motive would be that this business plan summary would land an actual business opportunity for you instead of appreciation only. Stay tuned for more details when SCI is launched.

Sadly, the 2nd iteration of Project ROTI was delayed because of unavailability of aata (flour). We tried our level best from big stores like Metro to smaller ones but we couldn’t arrange a single bag as there was a major shortage and no store had gotten any supplies since last two weeks . Now we have reached such a situation in our country that people who have reasonable amount of money can’t buy flour.

Eventually we had to delay it so that we could do it properly. However the time has not been decided for the next iteration and most probably it will be on next weekend. This reminds me off Jalib,

Roti, kapda aur dawa
Ghar rehne ko chhota sa
Muft mujhe talim dila
Mein bhi Musalmaan hoon wallah
Pakistan ka matlab kya
La Ilaha Illalah

If you have a gun & you run out of bullets during a fight, chances are you wont survive (bullets no bullets you fight like a man and die like a hero). If you have a gun, you are on the run and don’t have the courage to fight , you can easily put the last bullet to a good use, if you have a little bit of something known as self-respect left in you, BUT!!!! what if you don’t have the fingers to pull the trigger, what will you do then?

Look around you, if possible look within, you might find the answer to the question posed above. Explore the realities surrounding you. Realities like Dr. Afia and her kids brutal abduction. If that doesn’t shake you up from inside, nothing will. Gather the guts so that one day you are able to pull the trigger and that day might not be far away.

Protest against detention of Dr. Afia will be held in front of Press club Lahore on saturday, August 9, 2008, 6PM - 7 PM. Join it and always remember

“You Can’t pull the trigger, If you don’t have fingers”

Click here if the slide show from Islamabad Protest (for Dr. Afia) doesn’t appear

PROJECT ROTI is a combine effort of YPL (Young Professionals of Lahore) and FASTRising. The main aim of this project is to distribute flour (aata) among needy people mainly lower middle class and other poor sections of society which are effected by the latest hikes in flour prices. They started this effort on there own and expect other people to join in. You can give them the donation but preferred method is to show up during there flour distribution activities, participate and see for yourself the transparency of the whole process.

Previously they distributed flour on 19th July and there next iteration is on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 (3.00 - 5.00pm). Please participate and contribute towards betterment of society, this country has given us so much, perhaps its about time we should also …

Previous activity under Project Roti
(if slideshow doesn’t appear click here)

Other links for more information:
Fastrising Project Roti
See N Report Project Roti

Before we start, a little introduction about Openlaszlo. Its a XML and Java scripting based framework for Flash (similar to Flex) in which you can create rich applications from HTML pages to flash files and DHTML. This article mainly caters the Data saving problems using dataset in Openlaszlo 3.3.3 (Don’t know if the problem has been solved in latest version).

Issue:

While saving xml by Posting it to a php or jsp or whatever page, using dataset, data conversion errors are shown. Even though the data gets saved but as an error appeared you will get onerror event hence you can’t really say if the data was saved or not.

Solution:

Pre-requisite:

Dataset:Make sure you have defined a dataset for the purpose of saving data in the following way.

<dataset name=”SendData” request=”false” type=”http” src=”http://www.mysite.com/save.php”>

Request = False so that the data is not requested while initialization (as this data set will be used for saving data)
Type = Http for Http request

Saving Data: Post data to your php, jsp (or any other file) using this sort of code

SendData.setQueryParam(”xml”, xmlString);

SendData.setQueryType(”POST”);

SendData.doRequest();

The xmlString in this code could be another dataset in serialized form like ( var xmlString = anotherDataset.serialize(); ), it should be well formed i.e. no syntax error. The above code makes a request to save.php for saving data. Now you will get an error on debugging console which is data conversion error.

Actual Problem: The problem lies in your php (or any other) page code. SendData is a dataset and is expecting a response which is well formed xml. Your php page is not returning anything and in solo mode response headers can’t be analyzed. The thing you need to do is that just print a well formed response i.e. in my case it will be echo “<ok/>”

When your save is successful you should print valid xml (anything valid would do it) and SendData will get it as its data( verify that by calling SendData.serialize() ).
Upon successful saving print valid xml (this will result in ondata event) and in case of error print nothing or invalid xml (this would result in onerror event fire).

This will solve the problem for you.

Few weeks back rain for 2 days literally turned Lahore into a swimming pool. We saw workers from WASA running around just to do something about it and we also saw our CM moving around on muddy roads (may be suspending few officers for not being up to the mark). But is this going to solve the core issue we have been facing for decades. I was reading in a newspaper where a study showed that the ratio for workers (working to fix drains) is 1 worker per 700 manholes. :O . We know not everyone is up to the mark when it comes to performing there duty but even if they are this task is impossible to handle. Recent rains however resulted in few WASA emergency camps that too in some areas around Gulberg (and not in old Lahore) where i guess WASA workers are just sitting and i guess waiting for the rain

On the left Mobilink’s KungFu Panda
On the right Warid’s Kung-Fu Panda

I was just wandering on the web as usual when I bumped into Facebook’s new User interface and frankly speaking I had the worst 30 minutes with Facebook ever since I signed up on Facebook.

Let me go through why I feel like this about a social network loved by many.

Border Less pages: There are no margins of the page which gives an impressions that someone just threw all the info on the page randomly. Although majority content is still the same (specially the feed) but it gets displayed in a way which literally looks ugly.

Is it Orkut?: click on your name on the top and you will see a page which looks surprisingly  similar to ORKUT (or at least the ORKUT it used to be as i don’t go there anymore).  It consisted of Tabs and a side bar but we will explore the detail later.

Wall: One of the Tabs is wall, umm I actually couldn’t guess what it was as it showed portion of my feed (my activities) and posts on my wall but i couldn’t actually understand what it actually was as it was all mixed up.

Slashing the Apps: Even though FB Apps have been blamed for cluttering Facebook interface but recently they introduced a reasonable feature of Extended profile BUT in this new UI you wont find any App in the first look (Is Facebook really up to slashing applications instead of funding them?).  Although you can click a strangely named Tab “BOXES” and make any application appear on your profile but it will only be visible on side bar and Facebook’s own feed take the major portion.

Slashing Apps II: Did you know you can make any application appear as a Tab but who gives a damn, why would someone go click a Tab to view one of your added Application.

No Info About You on Your Profile: Yes your info is in the tab and not on your main Profile page, congratulations!

Clean vs Cluttered: Ok the Apps don’t make a mess anymore but Facebook itself has taken the job. Most of it doesn’t make any sense.

Transitions: There are in fact few cool features as well like transitions between images and albums are a lot smoother.

Overall its a disappointment. Its a work in progress and i hope they make it better before they actually switch to it. Click here if you also want to have the pain for your eyes type UI (obviously you can always switch back). For now at least I am switching back :/

above picture is a screen capture of a windows mobile phone showing spam from telcos and reaction of a customer upon receiving it