FableGod

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

As a relatively new web entrepreneur, one question that i get asked a lot - Why Fachak.com … or how fachak.com … and/or many variations of same question.

Thought would enumerate some guidelines that we had formed while selecting our domain name …

A .com

We were very clear right at the outstart that whatever domain name we choose, it has to be a .com … i always use ctrl + enter and i am sure many more people do so … hence i always ended up typing  slideshare.com instead of slideshare.net before I reached the actual site.

Moreover, I have seen a lot of friends assuming by default that the site they are viewing is a .com … so while they would remember ‘your-domain-name’ out of ‘your-domain-name.xyz’ they would in all probability type in your-domain-name.com … instead of whatever it was.

10 dollars or less

If you are rich and have tonnes of money, you may as well spend much more … there is a sprawling domain market where can get you great domain names for millions.

But this was never even a consideration for us … not even a single thought was spared on spending anything more than 10 dollars on domain name … we had limited resources and we would be better off spending them elsewhere.

Easy to pronounce

Ever wondered what makes google or yahoo or ebay sound so good …  may be its because they are  both bisyllables … amazon, orkut are tri syllables but still great domain names … facebook, myspace have four syllables each … add anything more and it becomes almost unpronounceable … try bruceclay.com … does that give your tongue some curls …

So our domain had to be limited to two or max three syllables. Fachak.com depending upon which side you stand on …  is either a bi or at max a tri syllable. And whatever is the no of syllables, its easy to pronounce.

Difficult to mistype

Ever noticed how you almost never misspell while typing google or facebook … now try wakoopa … how many times do you mistype that out of 100 times … is it a significant no … most probably yes … why … because its easier to type ‘g’ than it is to type ‘w’ … its easier to type ‘o’ than it is to type ‘p’ … All the letters in google - g,o,l,e or in facebook - f,a,c,e,b,o,k are at relatively easier words to type in a qwerty keyboard. Similarly, all the letters in fachak - f,a,c,h,k are at relatively easy fingertips.

Hard to misspell

If you are a startup, a significant lot of marketing would happen by word of mouth … probably on those water cooler conversations … so try misspell that domain name thats lingering in your mind since last night … is it possible to misspell it … if the answer is yes, be sure a lot of people would do it.

Notice that sudden peak in cool.com …. thats because cuil.com was launched around same time. A lot of people typed in cool.com instead of cuil.com … and traffic died down once cuil.com’s traffic died down … albeit its still larger than the initial traffic.

In fact, thats a problem for us too … some users have reported that they  typed in facha.com the first time they tried to reach fachak.com … so thats one thing we need to work on in our communcation …

A positive or no meaning…

If you were lucky, you were yahoo … but that was 1995 … and for rest of us are mere mortals … words with positive association that would still satisfy other guidelines are not so easily available … so go the sony way … coin a word that carries no meaning .. and do a lot of marketing to give it a meaning …

That was the route we followed with Fachak. Although, fachak signifies sound of splash in  native Hindi …. in most other languages its an unknown word.

No rule is indispensable

The most important guideline - none of above guidelines is indispensable … if you find a name  that’s great in some areas but lacks in one or two, you may as well go ahead with it … ultimately its your baby … if you feel its right choice, go ahead right away.

In fact, Fachak was not a result of following these guidelines strictly but more a result of  a creative streak inspired by an advertisement in a comic book. We had tried about 500 keywords while searching for available domain names - all the while trying permutations on words with positive meanings - cool, trendy, hip … et al … when I finally found something that was available. When we crosschecked fachak against the guidelines we had formed, it fitted the bill perfectly … or almost perfectly

Finally, do give your domain name about 3-4 weeks to grow on you, before you finally accept it or reject it … especially with names that carry no meaning at all …

It took my team almost 3 weeks, before all of us really started liking Fachak.com … before that it was yet another idea thrown in by a crazy entrepreneur

Vaneet

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

written by vaneet \\ tags: com, domain market, domain name, domain names, Fachak, internet, marketing, syllables, web entrepreneur, website

Some more coverage … this time from Indian blogs

http://www.pluggd.in/2008/09/morpheus-ventures-new-batch-of-startups

http://www.watblog.com/2008/09/11/morpheus-ventures-announces-7-new-startups-under-its-y-combinator-model/

http://www.startupdunia.com/2008/09/10/morpheus-venture-partners-second-batch-of-companies/

http://news.digimouth.com/generic-news/morpheus-funds-7-indian-startups.html

http://www.alootechie.com/content/morpheus-venture-partners-selects-7-startups-mentoring

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

written by vaneet \\ tags: coverage, Fachak, Morpheus, MVP, pluggd.in, startupduniya, watblog

We, at Fachak, have been working with Sameer and Nandini from Morpheus Ventures for quite some time now. Today the association got its first PR coverage

Mashable decided to feature the second batch of MVP portfolio companies … that means Fachak + 6 more

Read the full article here.

http://mashable.com/2008/09/10/india-internet-investments/

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

written by vaneet \\ tags: Fachak, internet investments, Mashable, Morpheus, MVP

If you are like me, you too would have one main pc where you spend most of your time. I always had a lot of software installed on my pc - for email, for browsing, for my calendar and my daily dope of feed. I had setup each of these as per my tastes and just loved the configuration.

But then early this year, I heard a lot of positive comments from my ‘into it‘ friends about how everything is moving on to web and kind of promise these services hold. I was really excited by the potential of these applications and decided to jump the bandwagon and give them a spin. So

• Thunderbird got replaced by gmail’s web interface
• Mozilla calendar got trodden by Google calendar
• Feeddemon gave way to Google Reader
• Firefox bookmarks moved over to del.icio.us
• MS Word and Excel got replaced by Google Docs

I used this configuration for some months and realized that advantages were just enormous. I could work on a strategy document at home and it would be waiting for me at work place in exact same shape the next morning. It became a breeze to share my stuff with friends. Breeze - just one click and all of them would get notified. Bundles of work hours saved. I was basking in a glow of satisfaction wondering why didn’t i move earlier. I was Webbified now … why not earlier?

I got the answer very soon. It stayed all webbified for some time before I started missing the user experience and features I was so used to. I couldn’t access and reply to my email when I was offline, I was required to connect to internet before checking my appointments, Feeddemon was just too good for Google reader, del.icio.us was never as powerful as browser bookmarks and MS word and excel offered editing possibilities which Google docs will still take some time to match.

But then I did not want to let go the advantages offered by these services. I wanted user experience and features of my desktop applications but wanted access to my work/feeds/emails even when I access them from some other pc. Simply put, I wanted the best of both the worlds - a hybrid approach … I started researching and that’s how following came into picture -

Thunderbird - Gmail integration

Thunderbird is a wonderful application for email. Most importantly, it’s free and its opensource . Add to that power of numerous extensions, and it truly becomes a world beater. I reverted back to this superb piece of software for my email access but not before doing some custom settings.

First i moved to IMAP instead of POP that i was using earlier. Gina has some very detailed instructions on lifehacker how to do it. In a nutshell, enable imap inside your gmail, set your sent mail folder in thunderbird to one in gmail, set drafts folder to one in gmail, combine gmail spam with Thunderbird junk mail folder and once you do all these you are ready to thrill.

Whatever changes you make to email in thunderbird would also appear in gmail and viceversa. So a mail that you read in thunderbird stays read in gmail, a label that you applied in gmail web’s interface appears as a folder in thunderbird and any mail marked as junk is junk in both interfaces. This seems like a true integration for email.

But … there are some more tweaks we need before we can truly claim that two applications are fully integrated … after the first step emails are integrated, contacts are not … here is where thunderbird extensibility would come to rescue. Zindus syncs personal address book in thunderbird with your google contacts. Just mention your email id and password. Hit ok and you are done.

You can go to Preferences to import all your contacts into thunderbirds addressbook immediately or just let the time take its own path.

Once you do this, now you have a truly integrated system for your emails. Whatever actions you do in Thunderbird would be reflected in gmail and viceversa.

Mozilla Calendar - Google Calendar Integration

I am a self professed open source software lover and everything else being equal, open source would always get my vote. Hence it was no wonder that i was using Mozilla calendar before moving on to Google calendar. While looking for hybrid solution, Mozilla got my vote. Since i was using Thunderbird already, i just went to Mozilla addons store and installed Lightning, the calendar extension for Thunderbird. If you don’t use Thunderbird yet, i would recommend that you give it a try. In other case, you may want to give a spin to Mozilla Sunbird the standalone open source calendar application.

Once you have installed Lightning, you would see a calendar tab inside your Thunderbird application. When  clicked, a full-fetched calendar application pops up. You can use this to maintain a list of your appointments, set reminders, set a to do list. Everything that Google reader does but without it being webified.

So whats the secret sauce to make it webbified. What would make it sync seamlessly with Google calendar! The answer is this this extension. (Sunbird users need this) … Just install it and go to New - Calendar while in calendar tab. Select on the network and choose google.

Now go to Google calendar interface. Click on settings - calendar settings and click on private xml address.

Put this address in your google calendar location in Thunderbird and you are done. Now you have two way access to Google calendar. What you do in google calendar would reflect in Thunderbird and vice-versa.

Feeddemon - RSS Feed

Fortunately this was easy. Without a doubt, Feeddemon has always been the best desktop based feed reader in the world. You can download it from here, install it, import your OPML file for already existing RSS subscriptions or may just choose a default package.

Unfortunately, Feeddemon still doesn’t provide two way synchronization with Google reader which in my view is the best web based feed reader right now but they make up for this by offering the same with Bloglines as well their own service - Newsgator Online

You can go to tools synchronization options and enter your account details there. Select your time for syncing and hit ok and you are done. All your feeds are available at two places - your feeddemon installation in your pc and at your newsgator account.

This is not the perfect solution - but if i had to choose between a great webbified access (read google reader) and a hybrid solution which offered great desktop rss feed reading + managable webbied feed (read feeddemon with newsgator), I would chose the latter. Of couse, Feeddemon + Google reader would be the ultimate combination … Anybody at Newsgator/Google hearing ??

Bookmarks - The Foxmarks Way

Everybody loves bookmarks. They are quite an effective method of maintaining a log of what you like on internet. Especially if you are using firefox 3+, you can very easily organize them in different categories and give them ‘Tags’ … hence making them a breeze to manage.

The only problem is what happens when you move across the computers. What happens when you have to access that important page at your friends place and you dont have your laptop handy … or when you have just reinstalled your system … does it mean losing my preciously saved bookmarks everytime …

I was in this trap earlier … i was losing my precious bookmarks everytime i was reinstalling my OS … this was one of major triggers for me to move to del.icio.us but as any long term user would tell you, delicious is a wonderful service but its not as handy as your browser bookmarks.What we need is something that would truly integrate your browser bookmarks with their web versions.

You are in luck if your primary browser is firefox. You have an extension Foxmarks that can be used to provide a seamless integration between your browser bookmarks and their online version that can be accessed from my.foxmarks.com

Once you install this extension, you have to setup an account at foxmarks which fortunately only needs an email and password input, and you are ready to go. The first time the application, it would ask you whether it should start the synchornization and the whole process takes less than 30 seconds.

From then on, the whole synchronizaiton process is automatic. In case you don’t have access to your laptop, you can simply logon to my.foxmarks.com and access your bookmarks here.

All these bookmarks are stored in exact same structure that was used in firefox. A complete mirror copy of your bookmarks.

MS Word & Excel - ???

This is one issue which i still haven’t found the best answer to. There used to exist a service Docsyncer which held some promise but it shut its doors in June, 2008. Since then there have been lot of services like this and this

But one solution that has caught eye of some mainstream publications is syncplicity.

What does this company do - In their own words

What does Syncplicity do?

Syncplicity is effortless synchronization, backup, and sharing. Install it on one computer and all your important documents, photos, and music are backed up online, complete with remote access and aversion history. Install it on additional computers and Syncplicity will synchronize your files — your important files will be wherever you are.

Work on a presentation at home, hit save, and it’ll be waiting for you at work. With sharing, it’s a walk in the park to collaborate with colleagues or to share your high-res photos with your friends.

Essentially, this is much more than just a doc syncing company. Sounds like an interesting proposition but their is a sore point. Its not free … they do have a free option but that is limited to two computers in all.

Dropbox which is still in beta is another option. It works exactly like syncplicity i.e. syncing any of your files across computers.

None of these solutions is a perfect Doc syncing solution though. We are still waiting for one … anybody interested … ?

UPDATE - I have been using dropbox since past few days and it seems a good solution … easy and automatic

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

written by vaneet \\ tags: bookmarks, browser bookmarks, Calendar, del icio us, desktop applications, Desktop Utilities, extension, feeddemon, Firefox, gmail, Google docs, Google Reader, RSS, Software, sunbird, synchornization, Thunderbird

Working at a startup would teach you many things. A founder is supposed to don many hats and simultaneously handle many jobs. Unlike well established companies, where you always have a specialized team at your disposal for each big or small task, a typical startup would never afford such liberties. It’s always the one man show where each founder is playing multiple roles of the programmer, the designer, the marketer & the financier.

When we first contemplated Fachak, we were lucky to have partners who were from different backgrounds. All of us had skills that complimented those of others and hence we thought that there will be well defined responsibilities from day one. But so I thought.

Initially, as we thought, my major contributions were supposed to be in marketing & product strategy as those were the parts i had some experience at … but a start up is bound to surprise you with the vocations it has in store for you. As it folded out, soon after we started, I found myself working closely and all most full time on design - first with Jasginder and now with Jetin. I also had luck of interacting with Nandini  recently and she brought some completely different user behavior insights.

During course of designing for Fachak, we did a lot of mistakes. All of us were inexperienced and learnt a new thing everyday. There were a lot of hit and trials and we got to know a lot of things the hard way.  Looking back, we went through a lot of cycles.  I have tried to condense what all i have learnt about good design in these 5 observations:

KISS your design

Good design should be about simplicity. Any design team would always have a zillion choices but more often than not, what is best is also the simplest of the choices. Make sure that design doesn’t make the users think; as their primary aim of being at your website is not to enjoy the design but to use the website. Strive for the KISS (Keep it simple stupid).

Open your PSD’s and see what all places there is a choice between effectiveness and design. Remove all unnecessary components without sacrificing effectiveness. See if there are simpler methods with design to achieve the same results. Iterate this process a few times. What you would get at the end would be much better than what you started with.

Nutshell - A great design should be almost invisible.

‘Design is not an art’

Your design team members are working 24 by 7 on your project with all their hearts into it. It’s but natural that some emotional connections would take roots. It’s very humane to feel attached with your creations and design is no different. Only that it’s an ambush a good design team can’t afford.

Design is not an art, it’s not a form of personal expression. It’s all about users. It doesn’t matter what you think, what matters is what users think. Give users what they want. Even if it means scrapping what you have worked on for past 4 months and starting from scratch, do it. Usability and not design is the primary factor behind success or failure of a website. So if it’s not usable, it may as well not exist.

Nutshell - A design is always about solving problems and if its not solving what’s intended, scrub it, stash it, slice it … do whatever but ensure that it starts solving what its supposed to solve.

Lead your user around

A great design should be able to lead the user’s eye around the screen to the information he wants to get. So decide what the important parts of your website are from a user perspective and decide their visual weights in your final design.

For example, in Fachak, the first thing a user  want is to know where he is … so he should see our logo. Then, of course, the most important thing for him would be content, so our design should lead him to what he is here for. After he had a look at the content, he may wish to vote or share the content and hence our design should lead him to those options, uniformly, easily and without hiccups.

Typical web users don’t read, they scan or at worst they skim. They use websites in glances. Back to Fachak’s example, our design has to ensure that logo gets the first glance. So it gets a big chunk on the top left. Content gets a warm white space covering most of user screen space, hence making it easy for the user to focus there … voting and sharing options get bold colors and icons to capture user attention after he has seen content.

Nutshell - Discover the most valuable actions for your users and place them at the most valuable places in your website.

Maintain Consistency

Design is like a symphony. Even if one tone is bad, it spoils the whole experience. Everything has to be orchestrated and has to be perfect. Similarly in design, everything has to be perfect. So what that means is: match everything - headings, colors, buttons, photos, icons. Make sure that there is one unifying and coherent theme throughout the website. Make sure that all the changes that you did during later iterations of your website are reflected in pages that were frozen weeks back. Make sure that while jumping from one page to another, user still feels the part of same website. Make sure that there is no inconsistency anywhere in your design.

Nutshell - Inconsistencies lower the quality perception and hence lower the user experience.

Test Early, Test Often

This is one lesson we have learnt the hard way at Fachak. We waited for Fachak’s design to be finished before showing it to the outside world. And when we first showed it, feedback surprised us. We were expecting the feedback to be very positive and when it wasn’t so it bit us. big time We had to go back to drawing board and it took us quite some time to get it right again.

Don’t stay in shell. Start taking user feedback as soon as you have something to show. Complete your logo and show it to your friends. Do your first cut and get some feedback. After a team has worked on a design for few weeks, its almost impossible for them to observe it from a fresh perspective. Hence  get some people who were previously unexposed to your design. User feedback will always bring some new insights.

Nutshell - Design something, take feedback, fix it, take feedback, fix it again, take feedback.

I have started calling the above observations as C-Salt (pronounced as sea-salt) principle. Consistency, Simplicity, Not an Art, Lead your user & Test your designs.

These were the few learnings that we had over last few months. With the expert consultancy we have now on board with us, I am sure there would be a lot more in future. C ya till then !

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

written by vaneet \\ tags: C-Salt, Design, Fachak, marketing, Principles of Design, product strategy, startup, Style, Website Design