After months of hard work and sweat, we shipped our alpha product to select friends & family. It is not fully baked and hence it the alpha tag.  As someone said “Shipping is a feature”. So we have shipped it with minimal features that we would like to iterate on. The results so far have been promising. We wanted to keep you update to let you know that work on the product is going full speed.

To Friends & family who have stood by us during these difficult months, a heart felt “thank you“.

P.S: We are looking for senior associates/team leads to help us take us to the next level.

We at Taazza are looking for Senior Associates to be part of a small but fun team to develop cutting edge software(real time) for news aggregation & delivery. We use ruby extensively here at Taazza (Nanite/AMQP/Sinatra/Hpricot to name a few!)

Your school & degree are not as important as your drive & passion! Here is what we are looking for:

• Have the inclination to LEARN & keep up with new technologies.
• Have a good knowledge of data structures
• Ruby / Java as a programming language

Nice to haves:

• Ruby on Rails
• Based out of Bangalore

If you believe this is you please email us (jobs [at] taazza [dot] com) & we can chat over a drink or a coffee! or call us at 9902842735.

If you know someone who fits the bill then share or forward this information. You WILL be rewarded (handsomely too!)

Things have been pretty busy for us here at Taazza, more people on-board (announcements in a few) and loads of work. But the workhorse that is helping do all the work is Hanuman, the SUN machine(x4150) that has been gracefully given to us by SUN Microsystems.  For those who don’t know Hanuman, he is a character from the Indian Mythology who personifies strength, belief & the will to accomplish things, something we expect from our server

I have pleasant memories of SUN Microsystems, as it was the first UNIX machine that I started my career with. They bring strong R & D experience and support to our organization. I would like to thank Bakshish Dutta of SUN Startup Essentials for making this happen. They have been an invaluable partner and have been helpful in getting us started.

And trust me we are putting Hanuman’s strength to good use Our Hadoop clusters, crawlers are pounding the server pretty good.

The churn has begun.. Interesting times ahead

Looking forward to a great partnership with SUN!

Hanuman took a great ride home from the shipping center (Indian style). I leave you with some pictures of his journey.

Nakul Mudgal

We are thrilled about it! After interacting & reviewing loads of resumes & candidates, we have made our first hire – Nakul. Nakul brings passion, skills & the drive to work on new technologies! We are happy to have him on board. This is a big step for us!

I will let Nakul speak for himself:

Hi!  Nakul here… I’m from delhi , born brought up and schooled, moved to Jaipur  for my engineering in Computer Science and now on my way to Bengaluru to join TAAZZA as an Associate Developer. My computing  strong holds include C/C++, SQL and VB.NET, Ruby, Perl, XML, HTML , data structures and networking. I also enjoy working in DB2 , Adobe flash and photoshop.

At TAAZZA I’m looking forward to working on Ruby, Perl, and well anything that comes my way.

Moving on to my personal domain! the things I enjoy in my freetime are reading quotations, my current favourite being “It’s not enough to be good when you have the ability to be better.” and my all time favourite “When all else fails there’s always beer.”

As for Sports I’m into are cricket , Formula 1 and tennis. Movies that I usually prefer are ones that have nothing to do with reality! Sci-Fi is all I like.

Looking forward to being part of Taazza both as a developer and a user alike!

We continue to look for  associates to be part of our team so if you would like to be part of our growing team write to us at jobs [at] taazza [dot] com. And while you are at it please take the time to review our post on what we are looking in our candidates

Thanks for Techcrunch for the hat tip.

Here at Taazza, we put out a request for hiring associates at our startup. This did generate quite an interest with folks  in the community. We have gotten emails from IIT grads to experienced folks and it has been a good learning experience for us.  It is time to share that experience with the community and we hope that this post will help other startups and those who wish to work for them.

Spend time understanding startups:

The first thing that one needs to know when joining a startup is to understand how they work and there are countless number of articles that talk about startups. There is a good chance that you want to pursue your own startup someday but if thats not the case make sure you understand what you are getting into. Here are some things to consider

• startups are not for the faint hearted
• startups are not a “get rich quick” scheme
• startups require sacrifices from everyone including you the candidate (pay/effort/etc)
• if you put your heart & soul and are part of the right team there is good chance you will succeed
• success is not guaranteed, it has to be achieved!
• remember its a journey, so if you are thinking about jumping ship often – dont even bother!
• startups are a small community and if you play dirty the word WILL get around

If you are still excited by the opportunity & the road ahead, read on ..

The next step in wanting to work for a startup is keeping track of them – be it through blogs or twitter or just being part of the active community (barcamps/etc). If you didn’t have the time to track a startup but are still interested in working for one, heres a quick roadmap on what to do.

What do you do when you find about an opening?

Research / Due diligence:

If you found out about an opportunity make sure you do your due diligence about the startup. Some of the questions to ask are as follows:

• What line of business are they in?
• What does the community (blogs/twitter/comments) say about them?
• Who are their competitors?
• What kind of people are part of the organization (linkedin)?
• Are there blogs/microblogs written by employees/partners/etc?
• What kind of technology are they working on?
• What are their strengths/weaknesses?

If the startup knows that you have done your homework about them thats a great way to start! You have already accomplished a few things:

• made up for any pits falls you might have
• shown that you are pro-active
• shown that you are smart
• shown inclination to work in a startup

Being in a startup is being part of a family. The more you know about your family member the easier it is to navigate & be a happy family! In the age of the internet it takes less than an hour to evaluate a startup.

If you cannot put in an hour for yourself & the company you want to work for, then a startup is not for you! Do it to help yourself & your career if not anyone else.

Look at the flip side of this scenario, you have to ask a zillion questions to know about the startup. The startup has to spend time vetting your interest before they get into the nuts & bolts of your skill set. It is a painful process & honestly a waste of time! A big NO-NO!

In a startup, time is money! Be mindful of it! Don’t waste their time nor yours.
Bottom line  – make sure you do your research before you apply.

Egosurf:

If a startup is going to expect you to do your research, be rest assured the smart startups will be doing their due-diligence on you! We do it here at Taazza every time we get an application. It takes us less than 20 minutes to evaluate the candidate’s online presence. So if you have anything to worry about please be the first one to find it and address it before a company does. Here are a few things to consider:

• Your pictures
• social networking profiles
• your postings onto the groups & social media

Sometimes not having an online presence is better than having a bad one. For a startup your postings to groups matter a lot more than your pictures online. A post to a group that doesn’t show that you do your homework is a deal breaker! You need to be smart enough to run on your own when instructions are given!

Having a online presence helps!

Have an online presence:

If you have a blog thats a start, but having a blog with thought provoking posts is something that is sure to get attention. If you microblog or are active on other forms of social media, thats definitely helpful. Make sure your interests & passion come through in those forums.

Having a good social media presence is sure to get yourself at least 10 minutes with the startup!

Have a linkedin profile:

The days of sending an resume with a long list of projects is coming to an end. Create a linkedin profile and just point us to it. Get your collegues/profs to write a testimonial for you. It goes a long way in helping make your case.

Make sure you understand the requirement:

Most startups are looking for people that are smart but make sure you understand the requirements of the job posting. Find out what your strengths & weaknesses are. Evaluate yourself & question how you can be of help to the startup. A majority of the times candidates do a bad job evaluating themselves and its a tell-tale sign!

It is absolutely important to know your strengths & weaknesses!

Now that you have done your ground work, you are ready to email the startup:

Make sure you realise that this is your one shot at getting their attention & put your best foot forward. Here is what a good job application will contain:

• one line introduction of who you are
• one line note about where you saw the opening
• what inspires you about the startup
• how can you contribute (strengths)
• a link to your linkedin profile

And the end of this journey make sure you have the skills to back yourself up or have the inclination & intelligence to learn! Your journey into a startup will be smooth!

Here are some tools to get you started

Research:

• Blog search (Google blogsearch, bloglines)
• Image search (Flickr)
• Microblog search (twitter)
• Comments search (Backtype)

Resume tools:

• Linkedin.com

Social media tools:

• Start a blog at wordpress.com, typepad.com
• Start a microblog at twitter.com, indenti.ca

We decided to write this article to help candidates applying for startups. So feel free to hit the reblog button and repost on your blog or elsewhere.

Oh, did we mention that we are hiring If you have found this post useful please help us spread the word.

We are looking for Associates to be part of a small but fun team to develop cutting edge software for news aggregation & delivery.

Your school & degree are not as important as your drive & passion! Here is what we are looking for:

• Are you excited to work on cutting edge technologies?
• Do you want to be part of a big dream & create products that reach your family & friends?
• Do you believe that you are smart, driven & passionate?
• Does news drive your life the same way it drives ours?

Then this is the opportunity that you are looking for!

• You must LOVE to code.
• Have the inclination to LEARN & keep up with new technologies.
• Have a good knowledge of data structures
• Very GOOD at one or more programming languages

Nice to haves:

• Ruby / Java as a programming language
• Ruby on Rails / Merb

If you believe this is you please email us (jobs [at] taazza [dot] com) & we can chat over a drink or a coffee!
If you know someone who fits the bill then share or forward this information. You WILL be rewarded (handsomely too!)

About Us:

Taazza is a innovator in the news space. We were among a small group of companies to demo at the first edition of proto.in (India’s DEMO conference). We at Taazza were one of the first intelligent news aggregators in the world & we are working on new technologies to make news personal & accessible.

Vox populi:

“Amazing news tracker, thought of everything that could build context on any news story” – Tara Hunt, Citizen Agency
“Taazza.com, an innovation in the online news space” – Economic Times
“Taazza found itself very well-received at the event, and ‘by popular demand’, took the presentation to BarCamp Bangalore too. – Business World

Google is going after new revenue streams and old media is snoring on their archives. Times of India has an century worth of archives..

NYT’s TimesPeople Social Network Tops 100,000 Users (NYT)

Impressive growth in less than 100 days! News does have a role to play in social networking and vice versa. Watch this space

Crain Closes Financial Week Print Mag; Now Online Only | paidContent.org

More print media are moving online as print costs go up.

Many thanks to Steve Rubel for the links.

Tribune Co. Mulling Bankruptcy – BusinessWeek

If Tribune does file for bankruptcy it would significant low point for the industry and a shift in the direction of where the industry is headed.. It was meant to happen but it still does hit you when it does.

The Medium – Content and Its Discontents – NYTimes.com

A fabulous write-up and analysis of whats wrong with current state of journalism and where its headed to! Kudos to the author.

NewAssignment.Net | an experiment in open-source reporting

An interesting experiment with the cutting edge phone. Nokia is the market leader in India. I am sure people would sign up and contribute if the right tools are available at the right time ..