The True Art of a Start- is by Instinct: The entrepreneurial spirit, Stretching the funds, A woman’s perspective, Meeting of soul mates

My first steps into the Tech world in a very non-tech way. One afternoon, I got a call from these friends of mine who had started their new company-.

RockeTalk. They wanted me to give them an honest feedback. The Good, the bad, the ugly- all of it. After a bit of convincing - notice it did not take too long- I was game to start playing with this very basic phone application that they showed me which in the Founder’s words was basically ‘SMS on steroids’.

There was something about this concept- maybe it was the Founders’ enthusiasm, yes it was two of them, that made me say yes. In hind sight, I had a suspicion that they had read Guy Kawasaki’s very firm advice and exercise in his ‘The Art of The Start’ to rely on the smartness of women. Well, they hadn’t.

Their reasoning: I came from a background of working, volunteering, with Non-profits/NGOs. I was involved in event and artist management. I had a strong Arts background – Psychology and Sociology. And that I was a people’s person. Loved talking…lol.. OK so most women do.

I was rolling my eyes by now. I read between the lines –all that talk about my background was a crock! It was my ‘volunteering spirit’ that drew them to me. Great entrepreneurs that they were, they were trying to get as much help they could for-FREE or at the cost of a couple tall Mistos at their favorite Starbucks! I saw that appreciated the effort.

I was, at that point, intrigued enough by the application and decided I would devote a much disciplined hour or so everyday to play with it (after all I had my day job too) and by the end of that week, come back with feedback.

I started off, created a username and within minutes had people pinging me! I was taken aback. I was told that the application was a neat way to send voice, text and picture messages painlessly- something that the promise of MMS had miserably failed at, to my friends and my network and here I was getting pinged by random people from- Russia, all over Europe, South Africa! And how did they find me? Well they said they just searched for a female user and there I was!

I was beginning to understand the application better. I was seeing it in a totally different light- very different from what the founding ‘tech-team’ thought they had put together! In the founder’s words, ‘Of course, I had to be able to see if my other friends were online and yes, I need to be able to search for my friends.’ Unknowingly they had introduced two very powerful components to their multi-media messaging platform - presence and search.

Soon I was getting voice messages from all over the world. From places- Turkey, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Canada. I was enjoying myself and was spending every spare minute I had, staying online constantly, talking to this mélange of people round the clock, at times waiting for some of them to get back on.

From my interaction with some of the people online, I knew I had in my hands something with great potential, something that could change the way people interacted. There was a flood of things racing through my mind. You got to remember I came from a non-profit background and had very strong views about the World, global understanding and working with people who did not necessarily know English. This was perfect! OK you’ll say I had a very naïve view of the World but I still believe this is the best tool. (More on this later) but I had run a business of my own and knew that everything needs to make money- even non-profits.

Needless to say, I could not hold back for the week to get done. I called and told them coffee was on me and that they could count me in every way! They knew the minute they saw me that they had indeed found a soul mate.

Factoid:
Man Smart. Woman Smarter (How could I resist)

Men have 6.5 times more gray matter in their brains than women do. Women have 10times more white matter. Gray matter creates processing centers in the brain, and white matter creates the connections between them. In other words, men have lots of areas for processing concrete data -- like mathematical equations -- and women have lots of connections that allow them to see and process patterns [Source: Live Science] :)

Life in the USA: Unlock a phone?

First let me declare- I'm a very ordinary gal. I now consider myself enlightened after several years of being given no choice but to learn things I never dreamed about. Yes, I knew and somewhat had an idea about the BUZZ words and considered myself well read, kept up to speed on magazines, followed the tech regular world's tech gurus- Oprah Winfrey and when there was nothing better to do- Martha Stewart- the regular sources for where technology is headed for most folks in the USA. I kept track of what 'hot' gadget made it to Oprah's list. And then a friend requested that I look at this new thing he was working on. And why did he pick me? He had this twinkle in his eyes and a simple explanation- I was the only one in his circle of friends who was a 'regular' gal- had no clue what to do with a phone other other than make a call.

Hmmm... interesting I thought. And what exactly did he want me to do? Oh nothing much- just play around with a phone. Okkkkk.... simple enough I thought. So I agreed. I was asked what phone I had, why Sprint I answered. Yes, I had no clue that I needed to know anything beyond the fact that it was a cool red Sprint phone. Yes it was one of the latest- had browser capability- not that I knew how to or ever felt the need to go to the Internet using my phone. (Hey- I was one of the first customers TimeWarner broadband had when they were testing their broadband- so why would I ever want to do it on a phone?) I considered myself one of the early adopters of the cellphone. Owned one since 1996 (for emergency use only- now it is my primary number)

The two guys looked at me, smiled and said, "Perfect! Now check out this application and tell us how you like it.' The next thing I knew, I was given a shiny phone very unlike my Sprint one. Everything looked different. Hm.. I thought OK so this will take some getting used to. I later found out what I had in my hand was the then latest and greatest Nokia phone a N70!

What a change! The phone was great. Took good pictures, had bluetooth great recording, wonderful battery life. And I was getting these great messages from people all around the world- Canada, Turkey, Egypt, Spain, Russia, India, Pakistan! I made friends quickly and started talking to them, exchanging pictures - yes talking no more just text it was voice and oh so addicting. I gave my feedback on usage and usability but then they needed the phone back. Small company limited budget $300 phone a phone was a lot. I understood all that and very reluctantly gave the phone back.

The application did not work on my sprint phone (by now I knew my Sprint phone model - Sanyo 8300). Bummer I thought, I needed to upgrade my phone and go for the N70. Soon found out this was not as easy as it seemed. This phone was not sold in stores in the USA. I had to order it online. It would take 3 weeks to come in.

I had researched and found that the then Cingular would support the phone so I called them. Well- the guy listened to my excited story about the new phone and then he simply said- he was sorry- he had never come across anyone who needed to make a non-Cingular phone work. He would need to ask someone else to help me. And then I was politely told that they could not do it. And then I was told I would need to get it 'unlocked'.

'Unlocked'? I never thought a phone needed to be unlocked- why would it be locked in the first place? This was already making me a bit nervous but I thought OK, I guess I was feeling adventurous and called the Internet site where I ordered the phone from to check if the phone was unlocked. They said no.

And then the adventure started. The phone came in. What a beauty! Now if only I could get it to work. For that it needed to be unlocked.

So now I had a phone that was useless unless unlocked. I had found that my operator won't help me unlock my phone, but a number of services were available. There were thousands of websites that could provide the code I needed (for a fee or free), plus as with most things in this very connected Web world, there was help from users in dedicated forums, and many Asian phone stores that could help.

To make things worse, I was warned that the 'code' (trick for unlocking) may not work, and the wrong code used 5 times would force my phone to a hard lock. That in mind, I did what a regular American – scared of the cell phone- stuck in my situation would do..... I looked for a place that would provide this service for me with some guarantee. That is how I found UniquePhones http://www.uniquephones.com. For $9.99 they could provide me with the code and have my phone unlocked in about 5 minutes! One catch- I needed to give them a ‘IMEI’ number.

And what on Earth was that? It is a 15 digit number that could be found under the battery or I could simply get the number by punching in *#06# on my phone.

Well, finally I was told to go to a Cingular store and ask for a 'SIM card' for my phone. I could finally get the phone to work- including getting the Internet to work - my Settings (It requires a special configuration message from the carrier- I later found out I could do this easily from the Nokia website http://www.nokiaUSA.com It was really great when they provided this service directly, but now they simply direct people to another site Wireless Data Services http://nokiags.wdsglobal.com/advanced?SiteLanguageId=118

It was a long exercise to get my phone to work- but all so very worth it! Now started my journey into the Internet using my phone.

Things have come a long way since. I use some cool applications to stay in touch and some just for fun.