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Building your development agency- Toptal

Quixom Technology is a small freelance agency based in India. Since last three years we have been using various freelance sites to earn our customers and quality projects. Since the start our attention has always been to create applications (web/mobile) which actually serve their target market and fulfill its requirements. 

We started our journey by choosing Python as primary programming language and using various frameworks around this. Since then, we have been successful in building quality products for all our customers. Through freelance platforms we were able to gain some good customers and some worst. Although, we were able to gain good business using various freelancing platforms, we were never able to work for a global brand. 

Below are some of the freelance platforms we have used so far:

- Guru

- Odesk

- Elance

- Freelancer

After using all the above sites, all of them lack one thing and that is getting on board key projects and customers. For any freelancer, below are the important things:

- Quality of work they do

- Long Term Projects

- Regular reviews and appreciation for the work

- Brisk and proper process from customer’s end.

None of the sites used so far, are proficient enough in protecting a freelancer. There are cases that after putting a lot of effort and time in analyzing a project, the project gets aborted by the customer. There is an increasing need for a freelance platform which can take care of all the above issues. 

Then, after a long wait, we came across Toptal. Toptal already had great technical articles before they came with their own platform to connect key customers with great freelancers. They have a firm process for a freelance account activation which is not based on identity(US identity what odesk has) but based on a firm technical scrutiny. I believe it will challenge other freelance platforms by solving the above problems. I have enrolled for Toptal for my team’s skills in Python and Mobile apps. I thank Web Freelancers community for building such a platform. 

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The Art of Estimation

November 27, 2015

Yet another week ended with more addition to our knowledge. Today’s Quixom Time session was taken up by Jadav Bheda on ‘The Art of Estimation’. This session was dedicated to discuss the hurdles that developers and business executives face while estimating the probable time for completing a project.

It often happens that we anticipate the approximate time for concluding a project but it turns out to be much more than the actual time estimated. This leads to delay in delivering the product and at times one cannot charge for the extra efforts gone into the project. This session was dedicated to overcome these problems and think about something that can reduce the time of completing the project lifecycle.

Jadav initially discussed about the various techniques like Delphi, FP, LOC based estimation, etc. that existed in the books for estimating a project lifecycle time, but in the practical life it is not feasible. Later on, he explained how we can actually go about a new project by exemplifying certain facts of the past projects. He suggested that the project needs to be broken in sub-parts where you calculate the time for the research, analysis and design, the actual execution time for the project and the time for testing and bug-fixing. For contingencies a buffer time can also be allocated. Identifying these parts separately, time can be saved at various levels of the project which will ultimately lead to on-time delivery and proper monetary estimation of the project.

At the end of the session there were doubts which were resolved satisfactorily. The folks did appreciate taking up such a topic, as now they will have clarity about the project even before starting it.

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The One Thing

November 21, 2015

Today’s topic for Quixom Time was a book review on, ‘The One Thing’, conducted by Jay Modi. It was an interesting, motivational topic based on how we should decide on our ultimate goal in life and the ways that will gradually lead us there.

The ONE Thing has made more than 175 appearances on the national bestseller lists, including #1 Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today. It took years for the authors to complete the research and publish book. ‘The One Thing’ gives answers which actually work, and it is all about the Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results. ‘The One Thing’ over here is defined as that one ultimate goal which you want to achieve in your life. For that, the focus should be on two things- the big and the small picture. The big picture is the One Thing you want to achieve and the small focus should be on One Thing that you will do right now which will lead you to your big picture.

One needs to take small definite repeated steps which will ultimately lead us to that one goal. The Ultimate goal needs to be narrowed down to time-based goals like Five year, One year, Monthly, Weekly, Daily and Right now goals. This helps you to deduce the One Thing you need to do right now which will gradually lead to the Ultimate goal someday. One needs to figure out the Should-dos from the everyday To-dos. These would be those inevitable things doing which everything else would become easy or unnecessary. Meeting your one thing daily and giving it the time it deserves is compulsory.

To do that, firstly, you need to block time for a downtime. It was very important to rest completely which will make you more agile to do your day’s work. Then comes the time for your One Thing. It is important to block your time every day for the One Thing, during which you do not allow anything else to distract you from your focus. Thirdly, you even need to analyze and introspect your progress. So, time allotment for the same is necessary once a week.

There are three commitments you need to do to get to your One Thing. Firstly, you need to follow the path of Mastery. When you take mastery as a path rather than a destination, you start feeling it to be accessible and attainable. The path of mastery is an amalgamation of doing the best you can and doing the best that can be done.  Lastly, you need to take accountability for whatever outcome occurs, rather than holding others accountable for your failures. This will make you result oriented and will help you to overcome the setbacks.

Along with this we need to overcome the four thieves in order to be more successful.  At times it becomes difficult to say No to someone, which ultimately hampers our commitment towards our One thing. Hence, this art needs to be learnt. Secondly, when you are focusing on the One thing, chances are higher that other neglected things create chaos. But it is inevitable. So accept the chaos and deal with it quietly. Thirdly, personal health needs to be taken care of which would otherwise silently hamper your productivity. Lastly, try to be in an environment which adds positivity rather than pulling you back. Make your own environment if necessary. If these four things are ignored, it may act as a thief to reduce your productivity.

In my opinion this session was a real help for all those who have goals to achieve in life. So pull up your socks and get going.

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Data Management and SQL

November 7, 2015

The first Quixom weekend activity was held on 7th November, 2015. It was conducted by Gunjan Modi on ‘Data Management and SQL’. For a non-technical person, the topic seems to be a bit boring, but as an IT company, coming up with such a topic was quite appreciated by the employees.

Gunjan was keen to share his experience on the topic which ultimately made others engrossed in it. He tried to explain the topic from the basics. This clarified the doubts of the employees, that were more on the practical side which otherwise is hard to address in their academics. He tried to explain and resolve their doubts by giving examples and even asking questions, as and when required.

Data and information are the key parts of any software system. Hence, every software developer should be sound in the data processing skill. The developer must be aware about how the data will play around the software system. In data management, storage of the database plays an important role in the software lifecycle. Gunjan had explained about the various technologies and tools to store data. He took some minutes to explain relational and non-relational databases, when to use relational and when to use non-relational database by giving real live examples. Later on, the discussion became more interactive about how to architect database efficiently. He architected the database for E-Learning website portal during the session, in which he combined the relational and non-relational database. In the middle of the session, there was a discussion of SQL queries like CREATE, INSERT, UPDATE, ALTER, DELETE and other basic queries. At the end of session, to elaborate the topic further, Gunjan was aided by Jadav and Akif who threw more light on the same.

Hence, it was more of an interactive session rather than it being only one-sided. The activity was supposed to be for an hour but it lasted for almost three hours. Still there are quite a few things which needs to be discussed and certain doubts to be cleared. So, another session for the same would be held as per public demand. All in all, the activity was a great success and we look forward to conduct more such informative and fun activities.

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Why choose Node.js? - Gunjan Modi

To build a full fledged web/mobile application, development team requires developers who know programming language to generate APIs and other server specific tasks. Generally, the server side programming language is being chosen among Python, Java, C#, PHP. But team must require developers with knowledge of JavaScript, as JavaScript runtime on every browser in the world.  It’s difficult to hire developers with knowledge of multiple technologies. Some developers are GURUs in JavaScript and rest knows little bit of JavaScript. In a nutshell, every developer knows JavaScript. Wouldn’t it be dreamy if JavaScript running on the server, as well as in the browser? Node.js converted this dream in reality! Node.js is a server-side solution for JavaScript, and in particular, for receiving and responding to HTTP requests.

Wikipedia says, Node.js provides an event-driven architecture and a non-blocking I/O API designed to optimize an application's throughput and scalability for real-time web applications.

Why use Node.js in this programming language war among its tough competitors Java, C#, Python, Ruby? These are the cool features of Node.js,

1. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. Some layman may have questioned, so what great deal in this? V8 compiles JavaScript to native machine code before executing it instead of more traditional techniques such as interpreting bytecode or compiling the whole program to machine code and executing it from a file system. Result is super fast performance. Much faster than Python, Ruby, Perl.

2. Node.js is has non-blocking, asynchronous architecture. When you try to do something which is taking too long, Python, Java and others will wait until the task completes. But Node.js will do other things simultaneously.  This is the strongest reason to select Node.js.

3. Node.js simplifies the development process. Use of same programming language at server and client side, reduces overheads in the development process. Application data can be easily communicated in JSON format. Even can be store in database with the help of MongoDB.

4. Node.js best delivers when it comes real time programming

Developing data intensive web app, chat server, data streaming server, ad server are suitable use cases of using Node.js

5. As Django to Python, Ruby on Rails to Ruby, what about Node.js?

Don’t worry. Node.js has fast, minimalist and versatile web framework Express.js. Express.js gives fundamental web application features like URL routing, middleware, template processing, error handling and database integration.  Now a day, MEAN stack is becoming cutting edge technology which made replacement over traditional LAMP stack.

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Q-Time | Weekend = Innovation

Many times it happens that the employees have some significant innovative ideas but because of their busy schedule they are unable to share those ideas and work on them. Thus, we at Quixom Technology decided to give the employees a platform where they can share their thoughts. For this, we have come up with the initiative of weekend activity, in which every weekend certain hours would be dedicated for employees to volunteer and contribute to weekend activity. We have named this activity as Q-Time aka Quixom Time.

The idea is to increase their creativity and also help them to improve their interpersonal and presentation skills. The topic can be anything from sharing a new software or app idea to a suggestion that would be beneficial for the betterment of the organization or just a fun activity idea. They can prepare a presentation or simply present it verbally. They can also review a book or a movie that they recently read or watched or even share a new breakthrough technology which others might not be aware of. So they can be as innovative as they want to be.

This is not restricted only to information or interactive activity. They may also play games at times depending upon public demand. Thus, Q-Time would be anything that is informative, interactive or simply play time.

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The Article Describes how important data analysis is especially when the data cannot directly result into information. 

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Yes! We Care... Do You?

It has been a difficult week for Nepal and its surrounding region. The Himalayan valley saw the strongest earthquake in more than 80 years. The Earth shook and with it stumbled centuries old heritage of culturally rich and diverse nation. Many lives lost, many lost the meaning of life. Official numbers tell more than 5,000 died, could reach 10,000 and more than 8000 injured till now. However the kind of devastation we saw, this numbers are bound to increase in upcoming days.

The help is coming from all over the world. Rescue teams and other humanitarian organizations are trying their best to give their support in this difficult time, Government of India being the front-runner. GoI has launched MISSION MAITRI under which it is providing relief materials like food, water, shelter etc. along with active participation of Armed Forces Personnel and Disaster Relief Teams giving their hand in rescue mission.

The weather has always been unpredictable in this Himalayan valley and in these circumstances it is only hindering the rescue work, making it difficult for people working there to restore the normal life. With so many lives already lost, unavailability of basic needs and fear of aftershocks still loom large over the region, the life is indeed very difficult. To make it worse, authorities will have to stop the epidemic from spreading.

As human beings, we all feel the pain for this loss of humanity and would like to do something to help. We, Quixom Technology are very small company yet we collectively are humans after-all and we feel the same pain. As, it is said that to contribute to any good cause, you don’t need to be worthy for it. Only good intention is suffice to make things happen. Hence we, Quixom Technology have decided to contribute 10% of our profits to Prime Minister’s National Relief Funds with a hope that it will be used to help people affected by this catastrophe.

Nature has its own way of operating. It creates life and it also creates ways to take it back. What we, as human being can do is, be there for each other.

We remember a quote from movie ‘2012’, “The moment we stop fighting for each other, that’s the moment we lose our humanity.”

Please contribute! For humanity!...

Your small gesture can become the reason for somebody to live.

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Walk-in drive @ Quixom on 06 Dec, 2014 

Your chance to be a part of our class team of developers at Quixom Technology (Register here). Walk-in interview for developers with work experience from 6 months to 1.5 years in any of below technologies:

Python

PHP

Java

Ruby on Rails

Front End (Angular.js, HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3, Bootstrap)

Place: Quixom Technology 220, Satyam Complex, Opp JBR Arcade, Science City Road, Sola, Ahmedabad - 380060

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Probably Seagate's Wireless Plus is best option available out there in mobile wireless storage segment. Seagate is dominating this segment since inception of Seagate's Satellite (very first version of wireless product line), but competition is closely picking up. Probable factors that made Wireless plus in consumer's consideration set are:

Easy to use

Nice and Clean UI

Great iOS, Android, Windows and Smart TV Apps

Works great with iOS products (That's why Seagate position it as iPad/iPhone companion)

Good battery life

Post in link try to compare various wireless HDDs. 

But who knows future belongs to whom. Because Hardware and other configuration are more or less same in almost all the products of various vendors. Then what are other things that really play a major role here as one of the biggest factor. Let's try to identify them:

Private cloud or cloud sync

Auto mobile data backup

Social media (FB, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr) integration

Integration with other devices in Home like TV, mobile, DLNA devices, Home theater (XBMC)

iOS, Android apps

Last but not least Public APIs that allow 3rd party developers to build great apps for the device

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We are Hiring.