This morning when I was printing all of a sudden the printers low ink indicator light turns on (toner exhausted) even though there is a lot of ink left in it. When I press and hold the printer button it printed a message saying toner exhausted, service printer. The printer has printed 2100 sheets and it needs a servicing.

The printer is more than a year old so it has no warranty. This is a way to discourage refilling of cartridges. The sad part is that even if you change the cartridge it will not reset on its own. It needs to be serviced by a technician.

Anyways I read a few articles on the net and found an interesting hack. Here is what I did…

First of all open the back panel of the printer…

Now locate the IC 93C66. This is an EEPROM that the printer uses to store the number of sheets printed.

Now short the pin number 1 and 4. These pins are the Chip Select pin and the Data pin. So when the main micro controller tries to read the number of sheets printed it will not be able to do so.

Connect back the printer and it should work just fine after this. I enjoyed doing this hack… thought I will share it!

Believe it or not, in India the term “I-pod” has taken a common name for an MP3 player.

In the common market, if someone asks you “Which i-pod do you have?”.

If you say you have a nano, shuffle, touch… he would be confused! But if you say that you have an Apple, Sony or a Philips i-pod he understands!

I wonder how this happened. How did the word ‘I-pod’ takeover the name for an Mp3 Player? Is it because Apple did not spread the awareness very well in India and the buzz spread through word of mouth? I wonder if the following could have happened:

Person A: What is an i-pod?

Person B: It is something that can play music!

Now when Person A sees an MP3 player he thinks it is an i-pod!

Not sure if this is a boon or a bane for Apple! Yes, the word “i-pod” is now widely used, but not sure if that is translating to sales for them.

Anyways we are keeping a short name for our product. The hardware device will be called “TECI”, short form for Track Every CoIn. So that it is easy to refer it – “Do you have a TECI?”

Blog also posted at our company web site.

I recently attended the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2009 held in Mumbai. It was one of the best organized conference. Hats off to TiE.

For the first time I heard all the big industrialist of India speak on stage. This was a three day event and every day was better than the previous.

First day the main highlight was the talk of Ratan Tata and Narayan Murthy. I was hoping this talk would be more about their experience and how they had built such an empire, but for some reason it was not moderated that well.

The talk was more of a political twist than an Entrepreneurial journey. Nevertheless they both answered the questions asked very well.

After this I heard Capt. Gopinath speak.

He really seems like the guy who has started from scratch. It was amazing to hear his talk about how he built such a big industry and sold it. He had a vision, a vision that everyone can travel and afford to travel by flight. How he raised money when no one was giving him any money. How he started off with just one aircraft by taking a loan. A very inspiring talk.

Now Entrepreneurship has become his lifestyle. He seems to have started a new logistics company.

Read the rest of this entry »

If I walk up to anyone and say that I love street running in Bangalore, people must think I’m crazy! But the fact is that by changing your strategy you can also love running on the streets.

I asked myself how come I love running on the streets and others don’t. I figured I was doing a few things differently.

• Running in residential areas:

Avoid main road when you can. If you are running random and don’t care to do a loop  it is best to run on small roads. Here is an example of my run around Padmanabhanagar. You  can see on google maps that there is only a few spots I hit the main roads (roads shown in yellow). I run mostly in the residential areas and small roads (roads shown in white). You can go from one area to the other by doing this, once in a while you might hit a main road, but find the next cross road as soon as possible.

What I love about running in the residential areas/small roads is that there are quite a number of trees around you. And all the houses look so different. Every house in Bangalore has its own charm in the way it is built. Some are colorful, some are built big, some are small and cozy. I keep myself entertained looking at all this.

• When you hit the main road stay to your right:

I feel this is very important to see a head on traffic than traffic behind you for two reasons, 1. You hear less honks. People in India honk so that the other person knows they are coming. 2. It is safer to see head on traffic so that you can move around looking at the vehicles.

But yes… most important thing is to find the next small road and get into it!

• Music helps

Music has always made me stay in my own world while running. I listen to a lot of podcasts / audio books while running. This can make you run a couple of extra miles.

These are the top three things that I do that makes a difference. I’m sure the other runners will have more points, do comment your experiences so that this helps other runners. Let us make street running a culture in Bangalore!

Took part in the bangalore cyclothon 2009. This was one of the biggest sports event in India I have attended. Over 7000 people participated in this event.

My wife and I took part in this event. Click here to read her experience.

The event was held at the NICE road starting at the Bangalore International exhibition.

It was fun to see Raghu Dixit perform at the show.

We had a lot of fun cheering…

Our cycling route: click here. I took 59min for 26.5KM. Hope to beat this next time.

Click here to see all pictures of the event.

Blog also posted at our company website.

There has been series of delays in our product release, we thought it would be a good idea to let everyone know what is happening and how our journey has been so far. We are really close to the finish.

When we first believed in the Track Every Coin idea, we started prototyping it.

We bought some ready-made, off the shelf LCD displays. These displays were just numeric displays, so one had to select the category from the list given. Never the less we were able to enter the expenditure and categorize it too. The system would talk to a computer through USB and transfer all the data successfully. And yes… the product was HUGE!

After this we decided to work on the LCD part a little more.

We got rid of the numeric display and got an LCD which can display numbers and text at the same time. This gave us options for many more features like someone owes you, you share a trip with a friend, track reimbursements, etc.

After this we further worked on the size of the PCB and finally reached a small size of the PCB.

We got our first plastic prototyped and now working on reducing the form factor and making it smaller and sleeker. After that we have to think of some colors and some cool graphics on it.

Here is the rough size of the device with two buttons on top. The final size will go down further.

The experience has been great so far and all of us are really excited to bring this product our for everyone to use. We are hoping the product will help everyone to get financially organized and “Track Every Coin“.

Finally uploaded our wedding pictures! Yessss… I’m married now!!! The whole marriage event felt like I was doing too many things in too little time. I now cant believe it has been a month since I’m married now! I’m loving every moment of this new life. Even though you loose more than 60% of your wardrobe… yes it is a lot of fun!

Click here to see the wedding site for more pictures

When I first met Roopa she had got me a gift from Brussels. It was a make your own ship kit. I was excited about the whole project. This was the first project together. I had seen a lot of these models when I was at Germany.

The Pirate Ship…

Making of the ship… We first started of finding all the different pieces and putting them together…

We enjoyed building the whole ship. It is best to do these small projects over the weekends. Keeps your mind occupied and a productive outcome

View all the pics here.

I recently discovered a new route to cycle in Bangalore south. Thanks to Varun’s new toy – Garmin 305, I’m able to show you all how the route is.

What I love about this route is the bangalore-mysore road stretch. Lot of this road is incomplete which makes it a great route for mountain biking We took a small deviation at Uttarahalli towards subramanyapuram, this is a great route for cycling. There is no traffic, no pollution.

The best thing I like is the way google map shows exactly the way bangalore-mysore road is! It just ends at once!

Three cheers to Garmin GPS

It has been almost an year since we quit our regular jobs and have been working on our new product TrackEveryCoin. The product will be out in July 2009.

This is a pre-launch site, we are letting everyone know what the product is all about and we request everyone to signup if they are interested in the product. This will help us to be better prepared when we launch.

Track every coin is a personal financial tool that will help you get organized in your financial life. If you ever thought you had no idea how much you were spending per month, what were you spending it on, or how much is your saving, then this product is for you. It also helps you do a lot more than tracking your expenditure, like goal setting, reminders, sharing, events etc.

We appreciate it if you blog about it, tweet about it, let all your friends know about it. Let people know that such a product is going to come soon to solve their financial management problem and help them.

Pre-book the product to get special offers when we launch it.

Please visit: www.trackeverycoin.com