.: the bojicas

1. They spend too much on sales and marketing before they’re ready
2. The startup doesn’t move fast enough and is outpaced by the market
3. The entrepreneur behind is unable to take the idea and transform it into a well defined product
4. The market takes too long to develop
5. Risky Business

Yes, I have been there, and I really enjoy it.

What is all about? Presentations of web applications (a total of four on this edition) plus a session of question and answers at the end of each presentation.

This way I could learn about trends in web development, I could figure out which platforms are in use, and I have been carefully listening to the answers of “What is your business model?”. This is because I am myself involved in such a project called Dine In UAE (dineinuae.com), and I am looking for effective solutions to bring it back to life.

But to my surprise the most applauded project didn’t have any business model behind (http://www.wasfati.com). It was created with passion, evolving from a simple blog gathering Middle Eastern food recipes, to a food and nutrition portal, with plans to become a social website, whilst keeping its main purpose.

The other projects presented are:

• http://darrb.com – delivery by third party, users register and request for some items, and darrbers are delivering those items. Business model – a planned darrber fee.
• http://logta.com – presenting hot deals in UAE, a portal where you can find out where are best prices for selected items. Business model – classified – which provoked some protest whispers – reminding that we were in a “democamp”, not a “marketingcamp”.
• Swalifcast – an interesting concept, YouTube like, but focussing on educational screencasts (arabic only).

In the end, we had some food and could make friends. This is how I met the guys behind places.ae and spinbits.com. I like their way of thinking and hope we can become friends, especially because we are embracing now Ruby on Rails technology as our favourite development platform, and should be in contact via Ruby on Rails Dubai Groups: rails.ae and the Google Group.

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) :

avatar

1. An image representing a user in a multi-user virtual reality (or VR-like, in the case of Palace) space.
2. (CMU, Tektronix) root, superuser. There are quite a few Unix computers on which the name of the superuser account is “avatar” rather than “root”. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term “superuser”, and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at Tektronix.

[Jargon File]
(1997-09-14)

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

Avatar \Av`a*tar”\ ([a^]v`[.a]*t[add]r”), n. [Skr. avat[^a]ra descent; ava from + root t[.r] to cross, pass over.]

1. (Hindu Myth.) The descent of a deity to earth, and his incarnation as a man or an animal; — chiefly associated with the incarnations of Vishnu. [1913 Webster]
2. An incarnation, embodiment or personification of a principle, quality, or attitude; — used of people, mostly in a positive sense as a manifestation of a behavior or character worthy of admiration. [1913 Webster +PJC]

Martha Stewart, the home-and-hearth avatar whose products are now available at Kmart stores, is making upscale design touches like 200-thread-count cotton bed sheets something that most every American can aspire to. –Leslie Kaufman (N. Y. Times, May 7, 1999).

[1913 Webster]

Source: dict.org

CODE:FREE is an open source and free software art magazine. It contains only images done with help of free software. It is in pdf format and is freely available for download.

Link: http://www.codefree-mag.org/

Blender file: perfect_shipping_02.blend

Looking at my previous design, I would like to add a rope to the anchor. I have researched the Internet for different techniques how to achieve this, and here is what I found on YouTube, Making a Rope with Blender’s 3D Tool:

My Blender adventure continues. Here is a 3D draft logo, I have imagined today:

Plus the Blender source: perfect_shipping_01.blend

In Blender, to find the angle between two random edges in the same plane, we need to select the three vertices which are forming our edges (the intersection point, and the vertices which are defining our edges). Fkey to create a face (if they are not forming already one) and then, press Edge Angles in Mesh Tools 1 panel.

Source: Robert Burke – “Precision Modeling (A Guide to modelling parts and components accurately using Blender” (page 54)

My logo, from previous post gets better. Curious thing, that I should to the company this prototype and a slightly modified version would be considered in the real world

Here is my progress so far:

and, the same, but with white background:

How to change rendering backgrounds?

Well, one option is to set up a plane on the back side of the image, which takes as a texture the picture I want to display in background. The advantage is that I can use the effects of dropping shadow on my plane.

Second option, which in fact I have used here is to go into Scene (F10Key) – Output Panel and change //backbuf with the image I want to display in background and to be sure that Backbuf button is selected. I couldn’t figure out thought, if there is an option to change the colour only, without adding an image with the colour I want (see bottom example, with white background).