Here is a link to Developing RSS Reader IPhone App using Monotouch video tutorial

I love C# and is my primary choice. Having coded in objective C for couple of months, its lot easier to code in C# and one can be very productive and can use all the good features of C#. For example in this tutorial I have used Linq to XML to parse the feeds.

Download the sourcecode here.

The following tutorial helped me a lot when I am trying to deploy my first iphone app to my device. Check this tutorial here

http://mobiforge.com/developing/story/deploying-iphone-apps-real-devices

I was trying to develop an iphone app and i want to use sqllite. Since this is the first time i am using the sqllite. I dont know which tools are available. Upon googling, didnt find any free one other than the sourceforge. I was like common guyz. So i thought why not develop an air based app that way it can run on both windows and mac. Before i started developing I googled and guess what some one has already done it.

Here is the link http://coenraets.org/blog/2008/02/sqlite-admin-for-air-10/. That’s awesome. Most of the times when i get an idea for some product development, I google it and I am not amazed any more that some one has already done that. It’s amazing that we all think differently but yet we achieve the same thing.

It’s amazing that how some start-ups experience growing pains when its business is growing at a rapid pace. If the leaders of that business are not looking forward and thought about the infrastructure that is needed to face the rapid growth, then the business can come down to its needs in no time.

All the time and money that is spent to make business successful can be  fruitless if the leaders are not visionaries.

From what i have seen, some of the  common mistakes that business owners do in this aspect is being reactive rather than proactive . Also not able to identify that there is a growth in a business.  They will be too proud of there success and they will making plans to celebrate but some times forget to plan for scaling the infrastructure needed to support the growing business needs.Here are a few gotchas.

1. Not streamlining processes.
2. Not hiring enough people
3. Not delegating some menial tasks
4. Not empowering people to take decisions
5. Not investing back
6. Not caring about customers

Can you mention some growing pains in your organizations and how people succeeded or failed in such scenarios?

I feel good when i know learn something new and apply it in my daily life. Most people i know , some times myself, feel bad or bored but do nothing and waste our days by spending our time in doing unnecessary thing like watching movies.

Here are some of the things that I do to get wisdom

• Read/ listen  leadership books
• Listen to leaders speeches
• Read or watch religious books/ movies and think about the fundamentals of life and its purpose as a whole
• Read self improvement books
• sharing experiences with people who are smarter and get there point of view on some aspects

How else can we improve our wisdom?

Have you ever observed that there are some things that will pump us up and some events in life that drain us. In a day, if there are events that pump us up, we feel great and some days when events that drain our energy levels we feel bad. And when the energy levels are low , every small decision we should make looks like a big deal and that upsets us and people around us. I didn’t observe this phenomena until recently my professor Chris Mead  in my leadership & ethics class talked about it. But if there are some events that we can generate ourselves to pump us up like Music, workout we can make our days better. Most of us just leave it upon luck or say bad day but we can fix it.

Top 4 things that pump me up

1. Crossing items in my to do list.

2. Learn  something new in technology especially robotics and communication and thinking about start up  ideas.

3. Listen to music

4. Talk to people who are successful and share common aspirations or get inspiration from them, or just go workout.

Top 4 things that drain me

1. Politics in office.

2. A non productive day

3. Work with short temper people

4. Watching TV

So when i feel drained , i listen to audio books about self improvement or listen to music  or get some things done in my to do list.

That’s how I fix my day if it is a bad day. And hope you got the idea, we can make our days better by doing things that pump us up.

I listened to this audio book “Get Things Done”  few months ago and I have to say it is working for me very well. Since I think too much and want to achieve a lot other than my work, i used to get cranky when I was not able to complete few items or forget them. But after practicing some steps mentioned in this book, I am doing lot better in organizing my thoughts, actions and execution. 

My favourite one of all is the “2 minute” rule. If a task takes that 2 minutes and you have everything you want to complete the task, just get that task done. This is helping me a lot in keeping my mind very clear. 

I am writing this blog entry following the same rule too. Just today i found out a web site called nozbe,  a fabulous online organizer that’s designed around David Allen’s methodology for getting things done. This site also has an app for IPhone or Itouch. I just started using it. Will let you guys know if it is working for me. In between if you are interested to know the tutorials for getting this done, follow this link. Good luck and now go and get some things done.

After loosing my father, I pondered on life and its purpose. Life is short and to get satisfaction and meaning out of it, we need to work on a worthy cause and serve others. We need the support of our family to serve that worthy cause we choosed to devote our life for.  After we agree on how we want to spend our life and on the meaning of life, we should make a short, brief and clear mission statement that simply remind us from time to time of what our purpose is.

 

Family Values and Mission : To make each individual of the family, an honest and productive citizen of planet earth and create an environment where the seven classical virtues can be learnt and practiced, while serving others & ourselves and making our life’s better and valuable. To make our life easier, and utilize our valuable  time for  greater good.

Life its meaning and purpose

What do we devote our life ?

To utilize the skills that are gifted to us by god to serve others. Help others who are in need. Mentor others to lead a simple and spiritual life. Make life easier that way people can have more family and spiritual time to grow from both inside and outside and make this world a better place to live for future generations.

How our life been spent?

Improving ourselves and teach others about what we learnt. Using our competence to serve a worthy cause. 

Personally I am still searching for that one worthy cause. Only one thing that I am clear is that the cause has to do with serving others and making  life easier. But I want to narrow it down even more to have a clear goal. Do you have any suggestions?

I love my itouch for various reasons.I call it my poor man’s iPhone. But hey you can still listen to music,browse web , watch videos, play video games,check emails with one touch. Day by day I am leaning more towards my itouch rather than my laptop. Best of all I don’t have to pay that costly monthly bill that iPhone owners have to pay, if you don’t have a budget for. I will write in more detail of what apps I am using to be productive and also for entertainment.

By the way, I am writing this blog entry from my itouch. Yep.

I am in my first semester of my MBA at George Fox University. I have to say that I am already loving this program. My professor, Chris Mead is making us think why character, ethics are important both in personal and business aspects. The most important thing that i am learning in this course is the importance of character. How well do we know our own character? Words we are saying ,are they really coming from our heart? Do we put those words into actions and are they in accordance with our values and principles?

So while we are discussing about the character and ethics aspects, my professor asked us to set our character goals. This blog is about my character goals.

Would like to improve and set my character goals in each of the seven classical virtues

• Courage, to do what is right and follow my heart
• Faith, to build healthy and productive relationships by earning the faith of others through my ability to add value and to do with virtue. Also to develop my ability to trust others
• Hope,  to have realistic expectations and to be hopeful and  creative in achieving those expectations
• Justice,  to be fair and authentic,  personally to be  be fair to the environment and consider options to reduce pollution
• Love, to be compassionate
• Prudence, to choose the purpose of my life
• Temperance, to balance work, family and community to spend our time in doing what is worthy

What are your character goals? You may ask why do we need to set character goals?

Too many people depend on their possessions to define their personality when in fact they should be allowing their personality to determine their possessions. They think that having the “Status Symbols” will give them status or toys will bring them happiness, when the only thing that gives you status or joy is your value to the community and that is determined by your contribution and your behaviour.So set character goals to get satisfaction in your life.