Sourcebits

The Leader In The World of Mobile Apps & Games

Mobile phones
introducing the

evolution of

Sourcebits Labs

14

sense & simplicity in

8 12

Social Media

stop being a

Designer

Managing Careers

EVOLUTION OF

MOBILE PHONES

Evolution is the change in the inherited traits of the successive generations and our beloved mobiles have come a long way in evolving to what they are now. Lets see how, due to technological advancements and research, they have evolved through the times, especially in the last 3 years.

4
Like space-ships, rockets, submarines and atomic bombs,
the mobile phone was also an invention originating from war. RadioPhone was invented for communicating during the second world war. Not too long after that, commercialization began, wherein Motorola took the first steps and and came out with a consumer-centric 'mobile phone'. Ill call this the talking anvil it was so big, you could possibly use it in battle fields to kill soldiers. Initially, there were two kinds of mobile networks one comprised of users having their radio gear in cars and trucks while the other has users carrying the talking anvil. The talking anvil networks then slowly evolved to satellite phones. As the network coverage wasnt so awesome back then. There were giant phones, not as big as the talking anvils , but more or less resembled a brick. Moreover, back in those days, people needed something to protect themselves from wild animals so they started carrying the brick phone. I still see some traffic cops carrying this phone, so Id like to think that this is to scare you into coughing more money. The universal Chai Paani mantra. The next generation of phones that came out varied significantly in shapes The Candybar form factor started gaining popularity, which was like smaller than the famous Nokia 1100. Pretty much every Jack, John and their wives started owning a mobile phone. The competition started to become fierce and other companies added a whole lot of features to try and sell phones. and sizes. But mostly, quite a few of them were quite bulky. There was a new war brewing, mainly between Nokia, Motorola and Siemens. These phones all had an antenna kind of thingamajig, sticking out from a corner. When this was invented, mobiles started to penetrate all corners of the world.

Then came along the Nokia era, where when you said mobile phone, it was assumed you meant a Nokia phone. Nokia had taken the mobile phone OEMs by storm, Mobile phones with color screens started being manufactured while their physical size started to reduce.

5
Sony Ericsson came up with the Walkman series phones and then Motorola came out with the Razr. Companies started to come up with innovative designs. There was the flip phone which could be folded in half. Slide phone which slides to reveal the keyboard, there was the turn phone which you rotate to show the keyboard. too started with the Android project.The iPhone was a big success along with Android. Although android had a lot of issues with its software and mobile manufacturers initially, other companies started to see that see that the mobiles are evolving towards touch inputs and started to give Android the backing it deserved. Today, the phones being manufactured are minuscule in sizes. Pretty soon we'll have credit card phones. Manufacturers today have awesome developer base which means more applications for users. Mobiles today have come a long way. They show time, they schedule meetings, they play music, they play movies, they drive F1's, they turn lights on. There is almost nothing they can't do.

Amidst all this competition, Steve Jobs at Apple was brewing his own special cup of coffee. In 2007, to everyones surprise, Steve came along and introduced a "widescreen iPod with touch controls"; a "revolutionary mobile phone"; and a "breakthrough Internet communicator" device, something we all know today as the original iPhone.
No keys, minimal buttons and no hardware keyboard. The rest of the industry simply ignored the release and kept creating variations for the phone hardware. Everyone was ignoring the developer offerings. Most of the mobile developers back then were doing a lot of work and had to spend nights to reduce size by 10 bytes to fit apps in memory. Not long after this, Google

Darshan

6
INTRODUCING THE

SOURCEBITS LABS
"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower" - Steve Jobs
This quote above aptly summarizes the reason why companies like Apple and Google have, and continue to dominate the tech industry. In fact, innovation and creativity are the two most essential ingredients for a company to continue walking on its success path. At Sourcebits, we always believe in pushing the envelope with our cutting-edge solutions. Our developers have consistently churned out the best productsfor you. It was thus obvious for us to come up with something which would foster creativity in our company. In line with the same spirit, we have decided to launch an initiative were calling Sourcebits Labs. Sourcebits Labs would be our own playground to come up with some really interesting projects and research works. Confused? Lets get to know it better.

So, what exactly is Sourcebits Labs?

Sourcebits Labs provides you the opportunity, a platform if you may, to come up with some brilliant and innovative projects, big or small, which would be shared with the general public. These projects can be anything like interesting games, Mobile and Desktop Applications or even some scripts that can boost productivity. You can use any language to develop your projects. The only requirement is that your projects should be

7
unique. We are not looking for another jQyery Slideshow or a tic-tac-toe game. It should be something which is innovative and fun to use or try. These Lab projects would be featured on the Sourcebits website as well. This will allow users to try out our new projects and technologies and give feedback on them. We would then further develop our projects based on user reviews. And if everything goes fine, some of these projects might evolve as our major products!! We would also be including a "Research" section in Labs. This section will feature in-house research papers and tech articles of the highest quality. We would be broadly focusing on the these research areas Algorithms, Machine Learning, Image Processing, Game Development, Cryptography, Programming principles & methods and Information & Coding Theory. You can also come up with new topics related to Theoretical and Applied Computer Science. Your project would be then hosted on Labs page. Obviously, you will get the credit for your project. Thereafter, users will give feedback and ratings on your project. We would be regularly monitoring the feedback for every Labs Project. Critically acclaimed projects would be then be taken up for advanced development. The same process would be followed for research papers and tech articles. innovative projects to us and then we will have some brainstorming sessions to polish it further. Moreover, youre always welcome to share your ideas or give us any suggestions regarding Labs.

But, will it be awesome?

Yes, it will be!!! We are looking forward to host some of the most innovative projects and research papers on the web. Moreover, Its an opportunity to showcase your creativity! So, make the most of it! We would be launching Labs in early 2011. You would soon be getting detailed information regarding Labs in the coming months. So, take out your thinking caps and awe us by your creativity!

How will it work?

The infrastructure for Sourcebits Labs is still under development. However, we can give you a brief overview of how its going to work. Every Lab Project begins with you! Submit your

Adit Gupta

Social Media

Who says your opinion doesn't count?

Let's do a little exercise before you get lost reading this article, shall we?

9
Has someone ever poked you? Do the letters RT in RT: The world is a stage make any sense? Have you ever StumbleUpon a web page? Do you Digg news content? Have you ever been tagged? Do you think you need a SecondLife? Have you ever thought that this is a world of warcraft?

If you have scored above 3, you may continue reading this article. If you score is below 3, you will be severely penalized if you don't read this article!

For the uninitiated, Social Media can be described as a social instrument of communication. Lets look into some amazing facts:

10
1 2 The average Facebook user has 130 friends. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook. 3 4 5 Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day. Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service. Oracles Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Epstein, was headhunted for the position via his LinkedIn profile. c 6 7 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool. You would need to live for around 1,000 years to watch all the videos currently on YouTube. 8 YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000. 9 There are currently 133 million blogs listed on leading blog directory Technorati. e Connectedness: makes use of links to various sites, resources and people to drive further participation. Conversation: It involves dialogue, two-way conversation as opposed to one-way information distribution used by TV, newspapers etc. d Community: allows like minded individuals to form communities for effective communication. b a Participation: being social means getting involved through feedback and contributions in the form of articles or opinions. Openness: being open to feedback and participation to all intersted participants. It can be in the form of voting, comments an sharing information. Social Media exhibits some or all of the following characteristics:

11
Now lets delve into the basic forms of social media. We can group most social media content into one of the following: a Social Networks: these allow users to build web pages containing personalized information and connecting with friends to share content and for communication. Eg: Myspace, facebook b Blogs: these are online journals written by individuals usually expressing their opinion on a subject. Eg: WordPress, LiveJournal, Blogger c Wikis: these websites allow users to add content as well as edit existing information. These pages usually act as a community whiteboard. The most famous wiki is wikipedia. d PodCasts: users can access audio and video files through subscription via services such as apple itunes, nokia ovi music. e Forums: these are specific areas of online discussions. The discussions are usually around specific topics and g f Content Communities: these organise and share specific kinds of content anong users. The most popular forms of content being photos ( flickr, deviantArt ), bookmarked links(del.icio.us, StumbleUpon), videos ( youtube, vimeo ) MicroBlogging: this is a miniature form of blogging where small amounts of content are distributed online or through mobile phone network. Twitter is a major player in this field. With such a vast variety of resources at hand, no one can ever say My opinion doesn't count.! If you still think otherwise, hop onto the social media band wagon. interests and each topic of discussion spawns a thread (a complete discussion on a particular topic)

Aurindam

12

designer
As designers when working on a project, looking for inspiration we often end up hitting the wall and then we are stuck for ideas with all possible creative resources exhausted.This usually happens when we get so fired up about certain ideas we fail to look beyond them. After sitting and brooding over them for hours on end we find it difficult to let them go. We go hunting for inspiration but then what normally would have been a great concept had we realized it earlier, we try to fit it into the bottle of ideas we already have collected and end up throwing it away. The easiest way to overcome this creative box we end up stuck in, is to stop being a designer. As designers we tuned our minds to think and

being a

13
apply our ideas according to our ground foundation of basic design concepts. We take an awesomely cool idea then realize "No this wont work! the color won't match" or "The perspective won't suit" or "The style will be different" etc etc. And before we know we've hit the wall and often end up repeatedly banging our heads against it trying to bring out those elusive ideas. Now this is where we need to stop being a designer sit back and look at it from a 'non designers' perspective stop thinking according to those rules we have well engraved in our cranium. Have a 'non-designer' look at your work and critique it and give suggestions. You will be surprised at the ideas they can give you, because they are not thinking like you are, they are not designers. Now we need to start applying those design principles to those ideas which we as designers would have discarded because they don't fit into the design concepts we have learned. Cut, carve,chisel or blow torch those ideas and then most likely we will find a way to bend the rules just enough to make them work into the design. So the next time we have that infamous wall to climb, rather than trying to climb over lets just stop look around, We might just find an open window to jump through.

Julian Wright

14

SENSE & SIMPLICITY

Do you identify yourself with one of these 3 executives: X, a marketer with superlative skills and work habits, has to drag herself to the office because the culture at her company is full of backbiting, favoritism, and cliques. Y, a graduate of prestigious business school, is on track to become a partner in a reputed firm but hates his job. Each day he has to force himself into a suit and tie and paste on a smile as he exits the elevator. Z is a senior manager at a successful IT company that was recently acquired by a large corporation. He is amazed by how quickly the magic of the small business has been destroyed!

IN MANAGING CAREERS

Do you see a disconnection ? Yes there is one and it is like a virus which spreads in the given complex nature of work environments, where focus is fragmenting, loyalty is decreasing & debates have devolved in to bytes. How do you perform at your best under those circumstances? Millions of workers toil fecklessly in the wrong jobs. They dont want to cause problemsor risk losing their positionsby complaining, so they simply do what they are told. I have seen and heard several people looking for tips on how to make their work life better. And, time and again, it begins with that they must first find the intersection of three spheres: what you like to do, what you do best, and what adds value to you and the organization. So what does it call for ? Try assessing it through a set of questions.

15
1
What are you best at doing?
Are you spending your time trying to get good at what you are bad at instead of getting better at what you are good at ?

What do you like to do the most?

it ought to be your career by now !

What talents do you have that you havent developed?

Dont say none.

Which of your skills are you most proud of?

difficulties youve overcome in your career?

16
5
What do others most often say are your greatest strengths?
you may not value them since they seem easy to you.

Which skills do you need to develop in order to perform your job?

Well, if you find an answer to this question, it might lead you to take a course, read a book, or work with a mentor or coach.

11

What were you doing when you were happiest in your work life?
Could you find a way to be doing that now?

What have you gotten better at?

Can putting in additional effort here can pay you off ?

12

What are your most cherished hopes for your future work life?
...and what could keep you from realizing those hopes?

What can you just not get better at no matter how hard you try?
...dont waste any more time doing them .

10

What sort of people do you work best/worst with?

Do you love to work with highly organized, analytic types? Do creative types drive you crazy? Make up your own categories. www.myersbriggs.org can open up a pandora of personality types.

Following ones passion, values & personal strengths is the foundation of ones successful career development. The only way to create this foundation is to know yourself. You have 3 sources of information for

What do you most dislike doing?

I'd like to delegate these to someone.

17
knowing yourself : you, colleagues, friends & family and formal tools of assessment. To use yourself as an information source, look deep within yourself to identify key

people who you work with are often excellent sources of information about your work interests, values & abilities. Pick five or six people who you
know well and ask them for a feedback about you. The bigger challenge here is your Emotional Quotient. Career development is a process of assessing where you are in your work life, deciding where you want to be and then making changes necessary to get there. It is something that you can definetly manage with sense & simplicity. Summing up, developing your own careers begins with self knowledge of ones passion, values & strengths/skills. What you are reading is ways of discovering your passion & interest. If you are thinking about it, then its just the beginning to exploring next steps values & skills !

themes. The

Anita Menon