We’re in *some* news …

Just a quick update …
We’ve been getting profiled and making the news some places ….

Though it isn’t really front page stuff, it feels nice to know that people are writing about you …
Just wanted to share the articles with you folks …

One article has been written in the mint this Sunday and can be read at:
http://www.livemint.com/2007/07/29190002/Three-startups-trying-somethi.html

While the other one is a blog and can be found out here:
http://go2indiaweb20.com/2007/07/20/activeciticom-the-evitecom-of-india/

(Though we’re quite different from evites – which is an online invitation and RSVP web application, we’re not complaining)

In the coming months, you will definitely see a lot of positive changes which will definitely set us apart from the rest of the websites you see in this domain …

- Saurabh

ActiveCiti – Now new and better than ever before :)

Remember those soap and detergent commercials?
Every bar of soap that you purchased within two weeks of the previous one, was somehow many times better than the other – even though you would probably not be able to make out one distinguishing difference if your life depended on it.

However, let me assure you that — when you log onto ActiveCiti now, you will find refreshing changes in the UI – and lots of other (distinguishable) improvements…

After ActiveCiti went online for private beta – we got tonnes of feedback with stuff that people wanted.
So, we all got down and worked furiously to implement the ones we thought were really needed.

The newest version of ActiveCiti (which we also opened up for a public beta) is a result of this.
We sincerely hope you love the new UI. Its cooler, simpler, squeaky clean and brand new :)

Some of the improvements and changes are:

• Brand new UI – The event creation pages have become a lot simpler and clutter free!
• Polls – Now, you have the ability to have upto five polls per event. So, go ahead and poll your invitees on anything you want.
• Import and Invite friends from Orkut, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc – You can now invite friends by uploading the csv (comma separated value) file exported to you by these services.
• People can invite themselves to public events – The public event pages now feature an “I am attending button” which ActiveCiti members can click to inform the organiser that they will be attending.
• Friends of Friends - You can now see friends of your immediate friends.
• Better guest lists - The guest lists have become more informative and graphical.
• Support for time zones – ActiveCiti, now supports time zones for both users and events :)

Below, you will find screen shots of some of the stuff thats changed:

You can now create the event quickly – within seconds and then add guests later.

The guests page is now cleaner, faster and easier to use.

All events have their event summary pages now. This page plays the role of the control panel for the particular event.

Our newest feature – Polls !

So, check out the new improvements …
If you liked the UI before, I think you will love it now :)

- Saurabh

Activeciti Private Beta Release

ActiveCiti Private Beta was released on 8th June, 2007. Everything went smoothly as planned ( except that the company blog was not up ). All users of Activeciti V1 were successfully migrated to the new site, and were notified about the new Activeciti by 11 am.

Since then, we have been getting lots of feedback and suggestions related to ActiveCiti. Many of them liked the fresh and clean UI, some found it a bit confusing. Many users gave valuable suggestions for new features which they would have liked on the site. We thank all of them for their support. It really made the purpose of Private Beta Release successful.

After gathering all this information, and lots of brainstorming — we started our work for the Public Beta Release. We are happy to announce that the Public Beta will be released on 16th July 2007, with lots of changes to the existing UI , coupled with many new features.

I won’t say more, keep watching this space for more updates :)

- Rishi

The Bigger Picture …

As you can see, we have successfully setup our blog and it seems to be working fine :)

If you look closer, you will notice that this blog is hosted on wordpress.com and not on our own server.

Pah! You’ll exclaim -“Whats the big deal in that?”
You just log on to wordpress.com, fill out a couple of details, choose a theme, edit the custom image and you’re done. Anybody could do that – so what is infact the big deal?

Before I go on, let me explain our dilemma …
The host from which we have obtained our server space, for the ThinkingSpace Technologies website, gives us a lot of options in the .Net package – but extremely poor permissions to run PHP code.

Almost all the major (and cool) blogging engines (including wordpress) are in PHP – and they failed to run on our servers due to the permission settings set by the host.

We then turned our attention to .Net blogs – and came across a few good ones – dasBlog and SubText.
However, this time, the Asp.Net permission issues kicked in and we had trouble setting these up too …

We spent quite some valuable time getting squares to fit through round holes — code (which we had not written) needed to be edited and the entire application recompiled to run on our servers …

And even after this, the results were not what we had in mind …

We pushed on – wasted more time to try and get applications to run on our servers which clearly – the server was not happily letting us run.
Thats when it hit us – we were missing the bigger picture …

The bigger picture in setting up the blog was to provide a channel for us to express our thoughts and views …
We needed a blog – not a blog that ran on our server specifically (though that would be awesome).

Hence, we kept our (geeky) egos aside and decided to go with a blog hosted on WordPress instead of waste more time in trying to set one on our own server. (There was even a lot of talk about writing an entire engine ourselves to host on our servers … but we soon realised that that would be trying to kill a fly with a bazooka).

Hence here we are, with a blog on WordPress – customised exactly to our needs …
With the bigger picture – back in mind…

- Saurabh

Hello World :)

What can I say? I am a geek…
Infact, even though some people will vehemently oppose it, we all are – at ThinkingSpace Technologies …

Which is definitely not a bad thing now is it?
When you know you’re a geek – you know you can get things done (technologically speaking).
Nothing is impossible and no mountain is too high to climb …

So, as all good (geeky) things in the world start, so does this blog with a simple:

Hello World!

Another thing mandatory to do with the first post is to write about what the blog is going to be about …

Well, ThinkingSpace Technologies is a small startup founded by 3 friends from the same class, same college – who quit their day jobs to follow a dream and chase a vision.

Part of the vision is writing extremely simple (shamelessly simple ;)) software which gets the job done and can be used by anyone without much computing experience – thus enabling a greater majority of people to benefit from technology.

What we plan to share with you through this blog is our journey …
The situations we face, our thoughts and perspectives on current trends, why we do somethings the way we do, etc. etc.

So there! :)

Welcome to the ThinkingSpace Technologies’ Blog.

- Saurabh