Sweet Memories...
In 2001, we had started a small company named the "Friends Online", a time when Orkut was not a common name among the youngsters. We all had just graduated from school (12th / HSC) and wanted to do something in the summer vacation!!
It was a website where you could make your own web-page with little bits of information about you and you could share this information with your friends and also make new friends online. It had many bells and whistles; was programmed in ASP (yes, UNIX was once unknown to me) and had a small 'Live Help' thingie that assisted new people through the website with mouse-over information about links and buttons... a live web-chat... etc. I guess it was one of the first DHTML enabled websites to come out of Ahmednagar.
The initial idea was to run it with a small fee from the members, but later we decided to offer it for free... and let the advertisements pay for the bills.
Yet, despite of the publicity, PR and stuff, we hardly got a few people's attention. Looking back, I realize now, that in 2001, when people were paying 30 bucks or more for an hour of Internet access in Ahmednagar, not many would be interested just because of the prohibitively high access rates! Then again, Internet was pretty new for us town folks and not many cared about it... hmm... just bad timing.
Anyway, it was one of my best times with my buddies! We sat all night coding new features, took loooong walks discussing on what else can be done on the project... fought over little details -
"120 pixels wide"
"NO! 150!"
"blah, too wide"
"heck!"
Now we all lead very different lives, each one in a separate place, in a separate lifestyle... none of use would had believed if someone told us we'd see this day!
(From left Tanmoy Chakraborty, Baljyot Singh Ranu, Saleem Khan, Joydeep Sengupta, Harshad Sharma)
Heh, its funny - my name is printed as Harshad Mehta - because those days, his scandals were the top news and every time I mentioned my first name, someone would involuntarily speak the wrong last name for me!!
Anyway, enjoy! More photos from Allahabad on the way.
Sweet Memories...
In 2001, we had started a small company named the "Friends Online", a time when Orkut was not a common name among the youngsters. We all had just graduated from school (12th / HSC) and wanted to do something in the summer vacation!!
It was a website where you could make your own web-page with little bits of information about you and you could share this information with your friends and also make new friends online. It had many bells and whistles; was programmed in ASP (yes, UNIX was once unknown to me) and had a small 'Live Help' thingie that assisted new people through the website with mouse-over information about links and buttons... a live web-chat... etc. I guess it was one of the first DHTML enabled websites to come out of Ahmednagar.
The initial idea was to run it with a small fee from the members, but later we decided to offer it for free... and let the advertisements pay for the bills.
Yet, despite of the publicity, PR and stuff, we hardly got a few people's attention. Looking back, I realize now, that in 2001, when people were paying 30 bucks or more for an hour of Internet access in Ahmednagar, not many would be interested just because of the prohibitively high access rates! Then again, Internet was pretty new for us town folks and not many cared about it... hmm... just bad timing.
Anyway, it was one of my best times with my buddies! We sat all night coding new features, took loooong walks discussing on what else can be done on the project... fought over little details -
"120 pixels wide"
"NO! 150!"
"blah, too wide"
"heck!"
Now we all lead very different lives, each one in a separate place, in a separate lifestyle... none of use would had believed if someone told us we'd see this day!
(From left Tanmoy Chakraborty, Baljyot Singh Ranu, Saleem Khan, Joydeep Sengupta, Harshad Sharma)
Heh, its funny - my name is printed as Harshad Mehta - because those days, his scandals were the top news and every time I mentioned my first name, someone would involuntarily speak the wrong last name for me!!
Anyway, enjoy! More photos from Allahabad on the way.