I have been browsing through Apache OfBiz documentation these days. It is a power packed offering combining the niceties of a weba based framework, to a strong set of existing abstractions to augment you website. Primarily, it is meant for building e-commerce stores. The architecture allows you to build plugins encapsulating the business use cases, and at the same time, extending any available functionality is also pretty easy.

This is a great offering for all the mom and pop stores, which have limited catalog strength and still are in phase of scaling up their businesses. Being open source provides a healthy and proven set components being used at various portals.

The recipe has Java as the core framework, java derivatives like Beanshell and Jython as the scripting tools, and Freemarker as the templating engine. One might argue that instead of a framework, it is a glue that hold various things close, but the real power is the existing library of components/abstractions shipped along with it.

As far as extensions are concerned, it can be compared to mozilla style development.

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After a long time i gave thunderbird another try. The interface feels a lot better, but still i miss the conversation view as in gmail. It is not much interactive in thunderbird. That is simple, but huge usability improvement (if implemented). The search result page looks good, and analytics give a refreshing feeling. Personas add beauty to otherwise gray matter .

In short, you will like it a lot

Tiger is one of the most beautiful ‘beasts’ in this world. It is more loved than feared. There are around 3500 left in the world, of which 1411 are in India. It is a startling fact as the number used to be lot higher, and has witnessed a steep 60% southward swing.

No prizes for guessing the reason behind this de-evolution. It has been primarily due to poachers free run due to negligence of the people donning the i-promise-to-save-tiger badge.

Many twitter users have attributed it to lack of education and poverty, bu dear sirs and madams, poaching is an organized crime. There is a huge demand for tiger skins abroad.  Till the demand thrives, the “business” grows. This is no different from blood diamond.

Whole world, specially the developed nations have a role to play in this. The problem can be uprooted if and only if the rich acknowledge the gravity of situation, and actively curb the demand, by making it a punishable offense to own tiger skins etc.

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Lately, Webaroo has announced that it has raised another round of funding through Charles River Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, Helion Venture Partners. Helion and CRV had participated in earlier round last year as well. It already has attracted a lot of media coverage, so i would not put much here.

Press coverage

• SMS network GupShup closes $12M round (venturebeat.com)
• India’s SMS GupShup Raises $12 Million For Twitter-Like Social Network (techcrunch.com)
• SMS GupShup Secures $12Million Additional Funding India’s Largest Social Network Plans Global Expansion (eon.businesswire.com)
• India’s Texting Community Provider SMS GupShup Raises $12 Million (contentsutra.com)