This could trigger a question on many curious minds “Why do I need to go to real college then ?“.  A question, I have been pondering for a while in a different format “What is the value add of a college/school in the era where you have almost everything available on web, free or paid ?”

Answer is “World works on relationships and there are no better alternatives to learn, experience and make them work for you, than going to meet and interact with real people”. You can learn whatever you want over internet, but most important things you need to be able to successful in your professional and personal lives is your Human Skills. This is true even in the digital age, where we have luxury to send a tweet to president or Skype with someone across the ocean. At the end of the day, normal human being, use these tools to influence his social circle.

Even if MIT had announced that, their online certificate is of same value as that of their real classroom diploma ( they won’t, as it doesn’t make sense from business point of view), folks who would attend their original classroom would turn out to be much more successful than those who just took same classes just online.

Why is it that a person graduating from Harvard or MIT gets much more success than a person who is much more brilliant but just could not attend one of these well known college? Its all about network and things you learn when you deal with real human being. That is what you need when you enter into a real world. No doubt that you need to be smart, but I have seen much smarter people who could not make it because (a) they don’t know right people or people who would know right people or (b) they don’t have human skills to make it work for themselves.

Opening up courses online would democratize education, and many education institutes would need to redefine the way they currently impart education. There is and will be, much better course content, explanation available online and education provider would need to focus on other side of the success equation, i.e. impart more of Human Skills.

Focus on Human skills, real world exposure in a controlled environment and strong alumni network is what is going to make a college successful than others across the street.

Overall, I welcome this move from MIT and encourage students to think about the value a brick and mortar college can impart in their lives.

Sending Madmimi promotion

You can create HTML promotions using WYSIWYG editor provided by madmimi. These promotions can be sent programmatically to your users using madmimi mailer apis. Below is C# sample

var request = WebRequest.Create("https://api.madmimi.com/mailer");
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";

//compose and POST message via Madmimi

var data = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(String.Format("username=YourMadMimiEmailAddress&api_key=YourMadMimiApiKey&promotion_name={4}&recipient={1}&from={0}&reply_to=no-reply@YourCompany.com>&body={5}", fromEmail, toEmail, bccEmail, ccEmail, MailSubject, MailBody));

request.ContentLength = data.Length;

using(var requestStream = request.GetRequestStream())

{

requestStream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);

}

var webResponse = request.GetResponse();

Above would send an email to your user and would also user’s email ID in the mad mini system, if not already there.

Now, if  you are sending your first ever email to the user, many a times you would like to add that user and his first/last name in the madmimi system. Below is how you can do it using Madmimi list management APIs.

request = WebRequest.Create("https://api.madmimi.com/audience_lists/BetaSignUp/add");

request.Method = "POST";

request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";

data = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(String.Format("username=YourMadMimiEmailAddress&api_key=YourMadMimiApiKey&email={0}&first_name={1}&last_name={2}", to, firstName, lastName));

request.ContentLength = data.Length;

using (var requestStream = request.GetRequestStream())

{

requestStream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);

}

webResponse = request.GetResponse();

Very easy, isn’t it?

Feel free to use above code and add your comments and suggestions as comments below.

Many years ago a senior corporate executive spotted me passionately pitching ideas for my my startup in India and few years later convinced me to join Microsoft India(R&D) as one of the first team member of MSN Games team in India. Since then, over 5 years at Microsoft, I have had chance to meet some amazingly talented folks around and made bunch of good friends while working on various projects like MSN Games, GFWL, Win7 inbox games, Windows phone7 Game Services, Business Intelligence gaming on phone, Omniture for Xbox.com, XBOX Live Services…). Hindsight, I got opportunities to work on some of the best software products in the world!!

On personal front, within these last five plus years, I got married, relocated to USA, became father of a beautiful daughter and made some wonderful lifelong friends. Incredible journey!!

As with any other journey, this one needs to give way to another and thus I have decide to leave Microsoft. Will be chartering some unchartered but exciting territories (aka Startup). Today is my last day at Microsoft.

I will be in Seattle area and my contact information is below and I hope to say in touch with many of you.

Wish me luck!

If you purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today! If you purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG, you would have $33.00. If you purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers, you would have $0.00 today. But, if you purchased $1,000 worth of beer, drank it all, turned in the cans for recycling, you would have $214.00. So, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle.

Its called 401 Keg plan.

Found my way back home…

Sounds great, but I have a toddler at home, who plays with phone and resets it every now and then and brings it to the ‘factory setting’ state.

I get back all my contact details, as they get synchronized with windows live. If I have synced with Zune Client, I might be able to get pics and videos on the phone, but there is no way for me to get all the apps I have installed.

I am pretty sure that this is one of the common scenarios people with kids and lock enabled phone have today. If you are a windows phone 7 app developer, you should consider writing a ‘paid’ app for the same.

Let me know if you write one. I will buy your app and get you more customers

Below is the deck I am presenting.

Amazing view as I captured this video while going from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour on a Ferry in Sydney.

These are Yoga straps, Yoga blocks to be used with some yoga postures ( I don’t know which ones). Yoga mats are widely available as well.

One of the key personality I came to know about is Bikram Choudhary , who have not only patented some of the Yoga postures sequences( yes patented!) but also running multi million ( if not billion dollar yoga business).

Yoga is not just about some physical postures but about a way of living life and is far far ( as far you can think of) from notion of getting anything commercialized.

I am surprised with commercialization of yoga in USA, what are your thoughts? Do you think it would be a great model for India to adopt to help increase awareness and adoption of Yoga.

Proud moment for everyone involved. 16 companies got incorporated (Puzzles to PetCare to Satellite device for adventure tourists to music search, education online……)

Great Food, Great Pitches and some great advice from Adeo made evening perfect.

Congratulations graduates! Miles to go….