What #SmartVillage means now

Tomorrow (24 OCT), I will be speaking about "Smart Village" at Google Business Group's "Mobile for Business" event.

This is from the event page,

Can smartphone help develop rural communities on education and improve economy? and can a very personal device like smartphone be a shared device?
"Smart Village" an innovative project since 2010, created by Sarvodaya-Fusion (a social enterprise) to see the response for above questions and we were led in to remarkable insight. Isura will share how those insights, which show the potential for using internet and devices to uplift rural small enterprises can help your business.

It is amazing to see how Fusion has evolved since SmartVillage inception in 2010. Something that started as an experiment, is now a country wide movement.

Here's the thing though..." Can we truly reap the benefits knowing that rural communities are ready for internet and devices?" " What is stopping us as a nation?"

Let's discuss, tomorrow.

Writing my first book.

Writing a book is hard. First I needed to find a topic I was passionate, and then to brainstorm and check if that is something people would buy.

This 'buy' thing was Gihan's idea. I wanted to publish as a e-book. But Gihan said, "if you need to be serious about writing a book, it should be printed." 

I guess he's right.
I have set 3 month deadline for the first draft. That is January 12, 2014.

So blogs on this space will be slow to come. I am putting effort each day in to the book. Mostly it is about one page per day. Not bad, considering the 'writer's block' I had been.

My wife, Muditha, seeing the first few pages, said "go ahead". A rare spontaneous 'yes' from her!

She's right behind me on this.

Crystal was helpful, motivating me on twitter. She will go through the first draft. Thanks.
https://twitter.com/isura/statuses/389025083768848385

This sounds crazy, I know. Just now completed the first page of the book I'm writing. Yes, you heard right. Heh. #theBookProject #fb
— ISURA (@isura) October 12, 2013

The conversation must build. Hence I will be sharing updates on hashtag #theBookProject on twitter and facebook.

Your thoughts, comments, critique would be lovely. 

Let me type.

Cheers !

Pic Credit: Tetra Images

Battery performance in iOS 7

First impression was great. iPad looked as if it is a new device. So much cooler and fresh outset .

iPad mini used to be the best tablet I used regarding battery power. But after iOS 7 upgrade, it started draining faster. One thing of course is I used it extensively as it is impulsive to see all the app updates and do upgrading.
Yet after all the excitement gone, and life settles back on iPad, I still find battery performance is not as it is used to be on iOS6.

So here's a very comprehensive guide, explained step by step to avoid unnecessary drop of battery. The best I saw ploughing through many articles.

It worked. (Make sure you do all the steps described)
Not to the extent of magical iOS 6 times, but still is a better option.
Many thanks to thameera for been the sounding board when things went wrong.

Pic Credit

When do we need a " Board of Life" ?

Shruti Challa said, an entrepreneur needs a "Board of Life".
Not a Board of Management, not mentors, but a Board of Life.

This board needs to have people whom you can fall back when things get screwed.
Life, Work, Projects, Personal, Health, what ever.
I agree.

Having access to them, on demand, is the key.
No, they do not have to allocate time, weekly or monthly, which is the popular belief on mentors. (Good mentors do not have that much time)

Pic Credit : Mike Hill

How a Sri Lankan rural startup won an award in UK

And when you thought that there's no positive thing in news on Sri Lanka, this pops up.

Amazing story. Entrepreneurship is well and alive in this country. And they are not in the limelight, like the superstars on TV, yet.
And no, you don't have to be "techy" to run a start-up. Or have ivy league credentials.
Imagine a day people talk of start-ups, just like they talk of super stars.

Nimali Gunawardana from Ambalantota in the Hambantota District was crowned last night as the UK’s Youth Business International (YBI) Start-Up Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 at an awards ceremony in London.

The award is endorsed by UK’s Prince of Wales and prior to receiving her award, she and other award winners had an audience with the Prince Charles.

Nimali runs a small-scale business named Nimali Chips and Fibre Mill, which produces and exports environmentally-friendly coir for mattresses and coir piths and more uniquely making coconut husk chips, which is a new industry.

Nimali, who comes from an impoverished background, was determined to overcome traditional ideas about women in Sri Lanka. However, a failed coir business venture and a lack of collateral meant that banks rejected her loan requests.

With the help of UK’s YBI member Youth Business Sri Lanka (YBSL), Nimali’s new business employs 13 people and is looking to generate a turnover of more than $ 39,200. And she is just 25 years old.

Nimali is one of seven children from an underprivileged family and she worked to pay for her higher education. Thereafter, to make ends meet, she became a machine operator in a garment factory.

Read FT full post here 

Pic courtesy: FT

7 things successful start-ups do.

1)  Get to work, fast

2)  Look for quick break even (i.e. simply, to get to that awesome state: income = cost), cash
generating projects.

3)  Offer high value products and services that can sustain direct personal selling.

4)  Not trying to hire the crack team.

5)  Growth, Growth, Growth.

6)  Focus on cash.

7)  Build relationship with their Bank (Bank Manager).

Exceptional list. This was taken from the article " Bootstrap finance: The art of start-ups" by Amar Bhide. I edited few words for simplicity.


Pic: Courtesy

How to use your android's data connection through USB on a Mac.

08 September 2013,

I wanted to use the data connection in Android phone on a Macbook.
Why? because I can have a solid internet connection from my phone data connection to my laptop with out needing a dongle. One data connection, 2 devices.

The operating systems: in android device - Ice cream sandwich(ICS) and in Mac - Mac OS X 10.7.2.

When I started my android journey in 2010 along side Fusion Smart Village, having a Google nexus one (on Ginger Bread) was the coolest thing :). I could simply enable the wifi hotspot in Ginger Bread OS and use the data connection as a wifi hotspot. And that was how the rural communities also used the smart phone as a shared device. Because of that, the smartphone was tagged by community as a "mobile telecentre". At that time I never tried the USB tethering option, which is, you simply connect android phone with USB cable to your computer. So now I wanted to try it with the new OS: ICS.

For simplicity, below is a technical explanation of tethering. There are 3 types of tethering. According to wikipedia,

"Tethering refers to connecting one device to another. In the context of mobile phones or Internet tablets, tethering allows sharing the Internet connection of the phone or tablet with other devices such as laptops. Connection of the phone or tablet with other devices can be done over wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), over Bluetooth or by physical connection using a cable, for example through USB.

If tethering is done over Wi-Fi, the feature may be branded as a Mobile Hotspot. The Internet-connected mobile device can thus act as a portable wireless access point and router for devices connected to it."

I tried about 6 different apps/drivers until I could yell " Got it!". It took about 4 hours.
Some of the apps needed installation from, both phone and laptop end. But would give error messages at the very last step.

The winner, the absolute beauty was " HoRNDIS". Very simple. I just downloaded a simple driver package, and installed. Then I connected the phone through USB cable, it automatically picks the connection. That's it ! . So go to their page here, and avoid wasting few good hours of your time. But be notified the solution works, if only you have Mac OS 10.6.8 (snow leopard) to 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion)

Useful Links:

The other notable apps I used can be found from this Mashable article.  But in my pursuit and also noted in many tech forums, most of them works fine for Windows, but not for Mac.
The most popular one is PdaNet, but that gives an error message on the last step: "error code "e00002c5".

So happy android tethering on Mac !. This is just my experience explained. There are many who try this.

Has it worked for you? If you are one using/trying, please drop a comment below.

Thanks Udara and Gopi for technical guidance earlier on ICS.

Pic: courtesy

Invention is not innovation

I met Prof.Malik Ranasinghe today at SLASSCOM CXO breakfast briefing. He was one of the panelists of the forum "Impact of policies concerning the internet on innovation and economic growth".
I have great respect for him. He was the Vice Chancellor when I was at University of Moratuwa. He bridged the Corporate - University deadlock by initiating key engagements.

He said" inventions are what we do at school and university level". Sri Lankan inventors are afraid. They are in constant fear that their ideas will be stolen by someone else. That is not innovation."

"Innovation happens when an idea gets viral to be adopted by general mass"

He went on to say, " if you want innovation to happen, get out of university, meet the industry, seek until someone buys your idea to make it main stream"


Pic: Getty Images Preview

Start-Up mindset

"Apple is the biggest start-up on the planet", said Steve jobs.

Start-ups are great way to fuel entrepreneurship in a society, to overcome challenges and seize opportunities. Organizations and people who's in the start-up mind set act fast, think agile.

No matter how large apple became, the organization breathed like a start-up. And that's how apple has achieved unparalleled creativity & innovation by rupturing many industries through tech.

This drives the point that learning about startups will help individuals and organizations at any given point in their life cycles.

Good news is, we don't need to be big like apple to be a startup, and grow.

image: Getty images preview

The lizard brain

The term "lizard brain" is coined by Seth Godin, in his new book ' The icarus deception'.
I read an article on the book, and "lizard brain" is:

Whether you know it or not, we all have what Godin refers to as a lizard brain. He says, "The lizard is a physical part of your brain, the pre-historic lump called the amygdala near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive."

Godin has written a lot about this in previous books including Linchpin and Poke the Box and cites author Steven Pressfield for further explanation -- “As Pressfield describes it, the lizard brain is the resistance. The resistance is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. The resistance is writer's block and putting jitters and every project that ever shipped late because people couldn't stay on the same page long enough to get something out the door. The resistance grows in strength as we get closer to shipping, as we get closer to an insight, as we get closer to the truth of what we really want. That's because the lizard hates change and achievement and risk," Godin says in The Icarus Deception.

Quieting the lizard brain is a constant struggle for entrepreneurs. It is a skill that needs to be developed. But as we tune into the frequency of what we feel is the right decision and tune out the lizard brain we will be able to truly test our business plans and hypothesis.

The full article: Here