Nirav Mehta on building software businesses, the craft of technology, and the things still being worked out. Writing here since 2005.https://www.mehtanirav.com/enhttps://www.mehtanirav.com/cards-against-startups-wordpress-developers-and-india/https://www.mehtanirav.com/cards-against-startups-wordpress-developers-and-india/Cards Against Humanity, but safe for work and covering startups, developers, India and WordPress.Wed, 15 Mar 2017 20:44:09 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/surviving-entrepreneurshit/https://www.mehtanirav.com/surviving-entrepreneurshit/What 17 years of EntrepreneurShit survival episodes taught me about business and life in general! If you are building a business, you may find solace here!Mon, 28 Nov 2016 09:24:51 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/build-it-and-they-wont-come-watch-this-before-you-build-your-next-wordpress-plugin-theme-whatever/https://www.mehtanirav.com/build-it-and-they-wont-come-watch-this-before-you-build-your-next-wordpress-plugin-theme-whatever/WordPress has more than 50,000 public plugins. Should you build the next one? Will it be worthwhile maintaining it over the next five years? How will people discover your plugin? What activities can suck you away from building great plugins? How do you land up with great reviews for your plugins? Does it make sense to listen to customer feedback? How do you run a business around WordPress plugins and make money? Those are some of the questions you will get answer for, in this talk!Thu, 22 Sep 2016 09:00:03 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/is-mediocrity-the-new-gold-standard/https://www.mehtanirav.com/is-mediocrity-the-new-gold-standard/We are Indian Developers. What China is to manufacturing, India is to software development. Cheap, Bulk, Inferior Quality. Is that true? Here are four experiences from different people.Tue, 20 Sep 2016 12:30:19 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/hp-lasterjet-multifunction-printer-not-detected-after-upgrading-to-os-x-lion-solution/https://www.mehtanirav.com/hp-lasterjet-multifunction-printer-not-detected-after-upgrading-to-os-x-lion-solution/I upgraded to OS X Lion today. While the upgrade went smoothly I was encountered with my first problem with Lion when I connected my HP LasterJet M1136P multifunction printer via USB. Lion told me it could not recognize the disk I'd inserted and asked me to either eject it or ignore it. I tried both…Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:54:04 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/my-notes-from-the-influencer-project-60-ways-to-increase-your-online-influence-in-60-minutes/https://www.mehtanirav.com/my-notes-from-the-influencer-project-60-ways-to-increase-your-online-influence-in-60-minutes/Got an email this morning from HubSpot about The Influencer Project - 60 Ways to Increase Your Online Influence - In 60 Minutes. HubSpot generally comes up with good content, so I went ahead and downloaded the report. The Influencer Project got 60 thought leaders together, gave them one minute each…Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:04:49 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/inspirational-quotes-for-startups-from-37signals-book-rework/https://www.mehtanirav.com/inspirational-quotes-for-startups-from-37signals-book-rework/If you are a startup, you have read 37Signal's opinions on business, productivity and building software. Here are some inspirational quotes from their latest book Rework. I took these insights from Dharmesh Shah's onStartups blog. And put them together along with the index of essays in a…Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:13:17 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/importing-paypal-transactions-into-tally-accounting-software/https://www.mehtanirav.com/importing-paypal-transactions-into-tally-accounting-software/We use Paypal to receive payments from customers. We maintain our financial accounts using Tally. Imagine copying over Paypal transactions into a separate accounting software - manually. You are creating all ledger accounts one by one. Ensuring spellings are correct, accounting heads are right and…Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:39:59 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/gearing-up-for-entrepreneurship-best-lessons/https://www.mehtanirav.com/gearing-up-for-entrepreneurship-best-lessons/If you are coming here after my talk at Prerna - Entrepreneurship Seminar at SFIMAR today, welcome to a budding entrepreneur! What follows is a collection of my best articles on entrepreneurship from last 4 years. - How to pick a co-founder? - Are you a 'scale-first' or ‘money-first’ entrepreneur? -…Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:43:06 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/showing-flex-preloader-near-the-top-of-your-application/https://www.mehtanirav.com/showing-flex-preloader-near-the-top-of-your-application/Flex comes with a reasonably good preloader (DownloadProgressBar) that shows in application center while the swf is loading and initializing. I had an application that is taller than browser's view port height. This means the preloader will show below the fold - making it invisible to users who…Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:47:52 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/better-everyday-get-things-done-one-success-a-day-i-had-many-today/https://www.mehtanirav.com/better-everyday-get-things-done-one-success-a-day-i-had-many-today/Where will you succeed today? My school's motto was "Better Everyday". I kept screaming "Better Everyday, Better Everyday" during Friday morning school assemblies for over six years, but did not really understand what it meant. I have been overwhelmed with work (happens every 3 months, it's been a…Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:00:45 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/don-miguel-ruizs-four-agreements-code-for-life-and-personal-development/https://www.mehtanirav.com/don-miguel-ruizs-four-agreements-code-for-life-and-personal-development/Ravi Malagi sent this to me and I found it worth sharing. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do…Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:29:27 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/avoid-these-customers-five-warning-signs-to-say-no-to-customers-plus-three-signs-to-die-for/https://www.mehtanirav.com/avoid-these-customers-five-warning-signs-to-say-no-to-customers-plus-three-signs-to-die-for/Are you feeling the heat of times? There aren't sufficient interesting & rewarding web projects out there. Everyone either wants to copy some social network / iPhone app or just wants to get it done at weekly grocery cost. It's not easy to find projects, so you may tend to pick up anything that…Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:22:26 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/bogged-down-need-a-break-heres-what-i-am-going-to-do-this-weekend/https://www.mehtanirav.com/bogged-down-need-a-break-heres-what-i-am-going-to-do-this-weekend/Take a Pit Stop, You Need It I am bogged down. Got hundreds of things to do. I feel caught up in responsibilities and my own expectations. I need a break. Need a pit stop! My mind is full of pending items, guilt and worries. I keep moving from one task to another. Fixing one problem and then to…Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:27:52 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/big-lie-repetition-audacity-truth/https://www.mehtanirav.com/big-lie-repetition-audacity-truth/Big Lie Repeated Audaciously becomes Truth Hitler, for good or bad, changed the world history. Some of the things going around me, just reminded me of Dr. Joseph Goebbels - Adolf Hitler's public relations / marketing / propaganda man. What's most remembered of Goebbels is his explanation of…Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:06:26 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/who-is-bhaskar-bharati/https://www.mehtanirav.com/who-is-bhaskar-bharati/Bhaskar bana Bharti If you are in India, you may have seen such hoardings around. Who is Bhaskar Bharti you may ask? And why did Bhaskar ditch so many girl friends? (and more interestingly, how did he make so many girlfriends in the first place ;-) Bhaskar (bana) Bharti is a new comedy show on Sony…Sat, 23 May 2009 13:14:30 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/macbook-wont-boot-sometimes/https://www.mehtanirav.com/macbook-wont-boot-sometimes/My MacBook has started misbehaving after 3 years of good service! Last Monday it did not boot. Came with "the folder with question mark". Which means it did not detect the hard disk. Removing the battery and putting it back in fixed it for the day. I was able to work happily. Took a backup later in…Tue, 05 May 2009 04:54:10 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/collaborating-in-web-application-using-svn/https://www.mehtanirav.com/collaborating-in-web-application-using-svn/What would you do if you wanted to manage document versions in a web application? You wanted different users to edit a document simultaneously and then for everyone to get the latest copy? Something like Google Docs? This collaboration need is very similar to how developers use source code control…Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:16:59 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/recursively-unlock-files-on-mac-os-x/https://www.mehtanirav.com/recursively-unlock-files-on-mac-os-x/I copied some songs from a CD and ended up with a folder full of locked files. iTunes can't save changes to song info (ID3 tags) until I unlocked them. How can you unlock files recursively on Mac OS X? If you have a folder full of locked files on Mac OS X, you can quickly unlock all of them…Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:01:43 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/intelligent-time-duration-estimate-slider-in-flex-inspired-from-the-hit-list/https://www.mehtanirav.com/intelligent-time-duration-estimate-slider-in-flex-inspired-from-the-hit-list/I wrote yesterday that I am working on a time estimate slider like The Hit List. It's finally ready! Here's how it looks in The Hit List. Smart Estimate Slider in The Hit List And here's how it looks in my Flex application: Smart Estimate / Duration Slider in Flex Want to see how it works? The live…Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:51:51 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/card-deck-animation-in-flex/https://www.mehtanirav.com/card-deck-animation-in-flex/I was trying out a GTD application the other day called The Hit List. The application is superb, and I was really impressed with their attention to detail. One thing that excited me was their card view - and especially how they animated card swaps. You see a deck of cards, and as you navigate…Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:53:52 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/strange-issue-with-site-dns-may-be/https://www.mehtanirav.com/strange-issue-with-site-dns-may-be/We shifted servers a few days back, but we seem to have some interesting problems. Right now, I see a two different versions of this blog in Firefox and Safari. Both point to same IP. Safari shows old version, Firefox shows new version. Puzzled! Solved it! This took much longer to figure out, but it…Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:24:59 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/picture-puzzle-an-iphone-application-turned-to-mac-app-because-of-delays-from-apple/https://www.mehtanirav.com/picture-puzzle-an-iphone-application-turned-to-mac-app-because-of-delays-from-apple/We applied for an iPhone developers account at start of December. It’s been about 3 months now, and we have not yet got the Developers Account despite sending all documents and repeated followups. We have 4 iPhone products ready to deploy, but our hands are tied because we don’t yet have a…Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:12:45 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/to-fuel-retail-move-to-spendings-rather-than-savings-says-kishore-biyani/https://www.mehtanirav.com/to-fuel-retail-move-to-spendings-rather-than-savings-says-kishore-biyani/I was doing some reading on retail industry in India and watched a presentation Kishore Biyani (of Future Group / Big Bazar / Pantaloons) made in 2008. He made a comment that got me thinking! Retail is booming in India, and people are building millions of square feet of properties. But where is the…Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:38:00 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/wsdl-to-php-generate-php-code-from-a-wsdl-file/https://www.mehtanirav.com/wsdl-to-php-generate-php-code-from-a-wsdl-file/There are many classes available to generate a WSDL file from PHP. But I wanted to create PHP classes out of a WSDL file. SOAP allows passing complex data around and to write a SOAP client, I need to have classes defined in PHP for these complex data. I did not want to manually go through WSDL and…Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:49:39 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/opening-external-links-in-new-window-from-as3/https://www.mehtanirav.com/opening-external-links-in-new-window-from-as3/You most probably know that there are issues opening links using the navigateToURL() method in Flex. The three most common problems / issues are: - allowScriptAccess not set to all in the HTML Wrapper - Window Mode set to transparent in IE - Popup blockers blocking the new window - specially when…Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:28:33 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/how-to-stop-keyboard-event-propagation-flex-javascript/https://www.mehtanirav.com/how-to-stop-keyboard-event-propagation-flex-javascript/In a Flex application we are building, we want to listen to Ctrl+N to create a new file. The browser listens to the keystroke and opens a new window. We do not want it to open a new window. This has been a problematic thing for many. I did a lot of research, trial & error, but I still don't have a…Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:25:48 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/organize-your-books-collection-without-tearing-yourself/https://www.mehtanirav.com/organize-your-books-collection-without-tearing-yourself/I love books, I read some of what I collect! I may go from one book to another without finishing it. I love coming back to books I read earlier. Two weeks ago, I bought 26 books in one shot. The largest purchase of books I ever made. I was fulfilled! My library case is already filled up and I needed…Sun, 09 Nov 2008 07:31:33 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/setting-java_home-on-mac-os-x-105/https://www.mehtanirav.com/setting-java_home-on-mac-os-x-105/I have been playing around with a lot of Java tools these days! I was trying out XPlanner and when I ran the startup shell script, it spit out the infamous error! The JAVAHOME environment variable is not defined correctly This environment variable is needed to run this program NB: JAVAHOME should…Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:48:37 GMThttps://www.mehtanirav.com/zooming-text-area-in-flex-messes-up-word-wrap-bug/https://www.mehtanirav.com/zooming-text-area-in-flex-messes-up-word-wrap-bug/We have been struggling with zooming TextArea in Flex for 2 months now. Tried lots of combination but nothing worked. Can someone help? Essentially, we scaleX and scaleY the TextArea as the zoom level changes. The component zooms in fine, but the text in it keeps wrapping as we keep zooming. We…Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:19:15 GMT