Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

For those who are new to this blog, I used to write my personal blog at Adeologue.com, which I’ll be deleting very soon. Recently I moved the same blog to this AdityaKothadiya.com domain. I’ve been wanting to do it since so long, but finally got the time to do it now. Here is my reasoning why I moved my blog -

1. Real identity

I started blogging 4 years ago under the brand called Adeology (Aditya’s Ideology). I really loved that name. But when I decided to host it on the same domain name, not surprisingly, the domain name wasn’t available. The closest I could find was Adeologue.com. I blogged under that brand for almost 2 years. But over the period, I got bored of it. I didn’t find it personal anymore. Also, the domain name wasn’t representing my identity. In this social media world, if I’m building my brand, I thought I better build it under one common identity i.e. my real name.

2. Personal domain

When you are writing a personal blog, which is not strictly topic specific, then it’s better you blog under your personal domain. It gives you some flexibility to write posts which are thoughtful, are oriented towards your readership, but are little off from your blog topic. In my opinion, if you are writing a group blog, or a topic specific blog, then you should go for some generic or topic specific domain name. This also gives you some flexibility to add more authors to your blog as co-contributors.

3. New broader focus

At Adeologue.com, I mainly wrote about entrepreneurship, startups, productivity tips for students and recent graduates, and lessons learned from different books. Since last few months, I’ve been spending more and more time in programming and building web applications, I found less and less time for the blogging. After spending more time on building applications, I also wanted to write about programming, hacks, tutorials, tips that I was learning along the way. But I couldn’t write it under Adeologue.com brand, because it was not started with that theme in the mind. Now, I’ll continue to write about entrepreneurship, productivity, tips for students, book reviews, but I’ll also write about small programs, hacks, applications and more. With this new year, new domain, new design, new focus, I’m excited to share more thoughts and more learning with you.

4. Blogging platform

I first started blogging with Blogger.com service. It sucked big time. I never liked that. And I think it still sucks. It was too close and too clumsy. But it was free, so I stuck with it for some time. After it reached my frustration peak, I moved to TypePad.com – a paid subscription service. That was my another mistake. TypePad also sucked big time. I’ve been using TypePad for last 2 years, but I hardly found any improvement in that service over 2 years. The service is slow. It’s usability has some serious issues. The experience was not pleasant. And the worst part – it was paid. It’s still the same TypePad that I started using 2 years ago. I never felt that it was worth for $90/year.

On the other hand, I found WordPress was doing relentless improvement in their blogging platform. And it’s a free solution if you already have the web hosting subscription plan. When I explored its 2.7 release, I was sold completely. It’s smooth. It’s highly usable. It’s fast. It’s simple and beautiful. It has lot of great features. And it is free. This was the turning point for me to move from TypePad to WordPress. I’m loving WordPress. I just regret why I took so long to migrate to WordPress.

5. More control

Another reason I’m loving WordPress is, it gives me complete control over features, layout, design, tools, all without additional cost. I always wanted to have clean, simplified, but CSS rich design for my blog. I could never achieve that on Blogger and WordPress for minimal expenses. Using WordPress, I got complete control over how I wanted to design this blog’s theme. I’m very happy with the result. Simple and clean. More focus on post entries. Fonts are also bigger and clearly readable. The width of post section is also wide enough that I can post some code snippets. Thanks to Lucian Marin’s original simplistic theme.

I hope you are also liking this new blog, and will also like the content of this blog. Let me know any feedback that you may have.

I still post random, but quite meaningful thoughts in less than 140 characters on Twitter. Here are my latest ones -

My Thoughts -

1. I think being “busy” is not a good indicator of our progress, but being “productive” is.
2. I think decisions are often made before we discuss it. We just try to find some support for it.
3. While developing a feature, we need to think like a user, not like a creator.
4. “Talk” is cheap. “Dream” is even cheaper. Then what’s stopping us from dreaming big?
5. Giving attention is of no use if we are not giving attention to the details.
6. Sometimes we learn the easy way, sometimes the hard way. As long as we are learning, it doesn’t matter “how” part of it.
7. If “designing” is an art then is “coding” a poetry? It’s not very literal or verbose, and there is always some hidden meaning.
8. Traffic jams are rarely because of real casualties on the road, but because of stupid drivers who think they are multi-taskers.
9. I hate slow drivers. I hate fast drivers too.

Famous Quotes -

1. What gets measured, gets managed. -Peter Drucker
2. “Value is difficult but possible to quantify – it’s the ratio of benefits to cost, divided by those of the alternatives.” -Nick Hanauer
3. If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. -Thomas Watson
4. Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good, it’s the thing you do that makes you good. -Malcolm Gladwell
5. No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich. -Chinese Proverb
6. In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions. -Steve Blank

If you enjoy reading my thoughts, then you can also follow me on Twitter here – http://twitter.com/adityakothadiya to receive real time thoughts and quotes.

Some more one liner thoughts – straight from my Twitter account –

If you enjoy reading my thoughts, then you can also follow me on Twitter here – http://twitter.com/adityakothadiya to receive real time thoughts.

I am still doing some interesting stuff on Twitter
that I mentioned a few weeks ago – post random, but quite meaningful
thoughts in less than 140 characters. Here are my latest ones -

I think I should fail as much as possible so that I can learn as quickly as possible.

In the long run, who we truly are will be more important than who we appear to be.

Expressing what’s in my heart isn’t always easy for me, but sometimes I do take risks.

Sometimes I don’t care if I win or loose. But I care if I’m engaged & absorbed in my activity & there is intensity in my act.

Why those people who _appear_ to be successful usually don’t _feel_ the same way?

I’m tired of free and ugly stuff. Beautiful offering is better than free offering.

“Someone in Test is also doing something that is somewhat similar to whatever you are doing” – Yeah, Thanks for being so specific.

If you want to shoot the duck, then you have to shoot where the duck is going to be, not where the duck is.

Yeah, theoretically I should get everything right as planned. But hey, didn’t I say “theoretically”?

I think I’m smart enough to understand if you are “smart” or “over-smart”. Thank you!

Yeah right, you give me THREE BANANAS and I just give you a mango. I got it.

I get nervous when I don’t have any one of these – Passion, Strength, and Focus.

I hope you liked them. If you want to follow me on Twitter – here I am (http://twitter.com/adeologue).

Related Articles:

One Liner Thoughts from Twitter

Random one-liner thoughts

Thoughts from Twitter

I am still doing some interesting stuff on Twitter that I mentioned in the last week – post random, but quite meaningful thoughts in less than 140 characters. Here are the latest ones –

You will be never fully equipped to achieve anything. I think you just need to be very adaptable and nimble.

There are only two outcomes – either you succeed or you need help!

If you are having fun, people can see that; if you are making fun, people can see that too.

Preparation before eleventh hour will never yeild best results, atleast in the long run. It’s the consistency that will kick ass, always!

Money is tight and time is even tighter.

Now I understood why VPs brew very strong coffee. They want you to stay awake stupid!

I hope you enjoyed them. If you want to follow me on Twitter – here I am

My previous thoughts are here –

Random one-liner thoughts

Thoughts from Twitter

I have been doing this since last couple of weeks over Twitter – post random but quite meaningful thoughts in less than 140 characters. Here are previous ones. And here are latest ones –

Vision is where your startup is headed, and it better be inspirational and uplifting. Otherwise what sense it would make?

Tell me a story, not just a message. It helps me to make your message more meaningful.

Does idea start hard and finish simple or does idea start simple but finish hard? Whatever it is, can someone please switch off my brain.

I think the best startup is the one which makes others to make money, not just save their money. There is huge difference.

"Doing things to get something" is far more challenging than "getting things done". Ironically, they only care the later one.

I seek performance. Then why I’m working on things I have to do rather than things I want to do?

Coffee-machine to me: What do you mean by this coffee isn’t as good as yesterday’s? It is yesterday’s.

I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to follow my updates on Twitter – here I am.

It feels like I haven’t blogged since ages. During past some period, though I wasn’t writing a blog, I was writing some interesting stuff – the PHP code .

On a lighter note, I have been posting my random thoughts on Twitter. I just thought of sharing it with you all.

Many times it looks like the rails are merging together. The more you walk, you realize that it’s just a perspective view.

Rejections are good. They tell me that I lack something and I still can be improved.

I seek performance. Then why am I working on things that I have to do rather than things that I want to do?

If you do things fundamentally right, no matter what, you are going to win, eventually.

It’s so easy to forget that still three fingers point to us when we point main finger to others.

Have a great week ahead!

It’s been really long since I have written a post on this blog. I have never been so inconsistent about my blogging before. When I look back, it tells me a clear pattern. Whenever I blogged, that either means I thought about something, or I learned about something, and I wanted to share it with you all.

Now it’s been almost three weeks that I didn’t write a single post. So does that mean I am not thinking since last few days or not learning any new stuff?

Fortunately no. I’m learning hell lot of new stuff, thinking very deeply about many things. It’s just that I didn’t give priority to write it down and share with you all because of time crunch. I know, time crunch is a very bad excuse, and I will make sure that I don’t repeat this mistake again.

So what’s that which is keeping me so busy? Three most important things – family, day-time job and part-time startup. Guess what, something very cool and exciting, is very close to an initial launch. And that’s why for last few weeks I prioritized launch related tasks ahead of my blogging tasks. Now I will get back to my blogging routine regularly. There are many thoughts and lessons I learned are just piling up in my head. So stay tuned, lot of interesting posts are on the way.

Apart from these three important things – I’m also investing some time in learning Personal and Business Finance. And I’ll share that as well on this blog.

So this post is to just give you a heads up about that I exist, and I’ll be back with more compelling posts very soon.

Today morning I received an email from Dreamhost, the web hosting company about my billing reminder. It was like –

This is just a notice that your DreamHost Account #xxxxxx has a balance of $xxx.xx (including any charges not due until 2009-01-18), with $xxx.xx due (since 2008-12-18).

You also have $xxx.xx past due (owed since 2008-11-18), and if by 2009-01-18 you do not pay at least the $xxx.xx part, your account will be automatically suspended until payment is received.

At a first glance, I was totally confused because I didn’t understand  why they are charging me for the next year? Then after re-reading it, I thought this has to be a blunder in their billing system.

But before I contact them and show my frustration, they sent me a following reply. It was very nice.

Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we’ve accidentally attempted to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY (it was all due to a fat finger)!

We’re really really really embarassed about this, but you have nothing to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have received recently; we’ve already removed all those bum future charges on your account and fixed everything up.

Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE this won’t happen again. There’s no need to reply to this message unless of course you have any other questions at all!

Sincerely,
The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!

I really liked the way they handled it. I totally forgot my frustration because of the funny tone of their message. And I want to thank them for making me laugh. Kudos to their support team!

Update: Techcrunch has a post on the same issue.

For those, who are not familiar with Twitter, it is a service for friends & family to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

It’s basically a communication platform where you update your statuses to friends. This service is getting a lot of traction in the community because of it’s simple web and mobile integration. People find this as a phenomenon.

So what’s the Twitter philosophy?
It’s very simple – update your friends about your whereabouts. Twitter is focused on updating your "statuses". It is a free form and one-to-many personal communication medium.

But this platform can be extended to some other domains as well, and can be very cool, and valuable as well. So the philosophy is – update your friends about some of your daily details.

So now I ask my question again, Do you believe in Twitter philosophy?

I do. I highly do. You can follow me here – Adeologue.

How about you?

Are you one of those who are asking "but why do I care to know what you are doing",  or "why should I tell you what I’m doing"?

If you are asking these above questions, then you are human. Seriously. I think every person who first hears about Twitter, probably asks the same questions. It’s very hard to find the "value proposition" when we heard it for the first time.

But believe me, once you start using it, you will start liking it, and at one point, you will get addicted to it.

So coming back to the point, do you believe in this philosophy – of updating your friends about your whereabouts and some interesting activities?

As I said, I highly do. Rather, I believe in this philosophy so much that I’m developing a web application which is based on the same philosophy, but in a different domain, with lot of fun, and with tremendous value proposition (I know, every creator says that about his creation, but believe me, when you will use it, you will also find the value in it).

I think I still need some time to announce it publicly, but the basic version is up and running, and few of my friends are testing it out. But still, there are many features that are in the pipeline which will show it’s real value. But I’m not waiting until it get developed completely. I will develop it incrementally based on your suggestions and feedbacks.

BTW, any guess about what I am developing?

Currently, I’m the only developer, designer, marketer, etc, etc. And I’m actively working on building a team.

If you -

• are interested in starting a startup (not that "I also want to start" interest, but the real persistent interest)
• believe in Twitter philosophy
• have entrepreneurial mindset and attributes (Learn what makes you entrepreneurial here)
• have ability to work insane hard and with  killer dedication
• have tremendous passion for coding (php) or graphics designing or online marketing
• like writing or blogging
• are ready to work without pay, but with substantial equity options till the idea hits the ground

then shoot me an email at aditya.kothadiya AT gmail DOT com with your background, and some impressive notes.

I am very interested in talking with you. We can chat and decide what we can do.

Atleast, send me an email, and we will be friends!

I’ve been wanting to write since last few days, but just not able to dedicate some time to think, and to write. I hope to come back to full throttle blogging mode soon. It’s just that I’m bogged down heavily into 2-3 different activities.

Day time job is very demanding for last few days. Evening time is too busy with family, startup, and book. Yes, I’m working on two exciting startups. Yes, I’m quite crazy to work on two startups in the part time. But it’s just that they are very exciting, and require different types of bandwidths. And learning from one is helping for another. So I guess so far so it’s a  fruitful experience. And yeah…the book. Yes, I’m writing one. I’m hoping to complete it by end of this year.

So hang on for little while, I’ve some exciting news to announce in next few days and months…

Will get to blogging mode very soon.

Why do you think that entrepreneurship can be a great career path? Find out the answer in a quote below –

“The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind – computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to very different kind of people with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people – artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers – will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” — Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind

Have a joyful weekend!

I know I’m very late on this front. But I finally started following PhD Comics. It’s addictive. Thanks to my friend Pallavi who shared this great comic series with me.

This comic series is closely related to Adeologue’s theme and its readers, and that’s why I am sharing it with you. I hope you will also enjoy it a lot with your busy academic and work life. Give it a shot!

Have a happy week ahead!

I am down with Migraine Headache for last 4 days. It was continuous bed rest, most likely the longest bed rest I have ever taken, at least as I remember. And one thing I strongly realized that, it’s not easy to take rest as well

I am recovering from my Migraine. So I thought I should just check what’s going on in this information world. When I checked, I had 33 new emails in my Gmail, 228 unread blogs in  my Google Reader, and countless (because Twitter doesn’t keep count) Twitters. It makes me so backward in just 4 days. The world is moving forward at such a tremendous speed. It seems that everybody is just working hard round the clock.

Seriously, in this fast paced information age, is it really hard to take rest as well?

… but I still do it.

Gossiping is such thing that almost everybody love it when they do it, and then they hate it when they are done with it. Its very hard to control the gossiping. We know that we are not doing the right thing, but we still can’t control doing it.

But if we love it so much, why do we think that we are not doing the right thing?

Whats wrong with the gossiping?

"Its not good manner."

"It makes us to think and speak bad about someone."

"It spreads the bad things about someone in the community."

True. But I think the biggest problem with the gossiping is — it destroys our relationship with the person about whom we are gossiping.

I think, when we gossip about someone, we prejudice our mind. And next time when we meet that person, our relations are not the same as they used to be. We have a different outlook when we look at that person. It just spoils our original relation.

And thats why I hate it! And thats why I am going to learn how not to gossip!